


He Allows The Dead To Speak

by Bawgdan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Adventure & Romance, Drabble Collection, F/M, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-27
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-07 10:19:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 21,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12839118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bawgdan/pseuds/Bawgdan
Summary: When she opens her mouth, he realizes that he has assimilated for her more so than he has meant to. She says his name, her tongue sliding between his fingers.This terrible assault on his conscience......He loves her. It's a simple crime with a horrible sentencing. Solas simply loves her.And he hates conceding to absolutes.





	1. First

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Solas spends his nights muddling over how to go about rectifying the corruption of his soul. This assault on his principles has blind-sided him. And those principles feel more and more like tiny dreams he can't keep a grasp on. As the days pass, his goals lose tangibility.

He hides himself behind a stack of books. These books he has read many times. Most of them have aged poorly but a small amount have maintained their nuance.

"Do you ever not look so deeply conflicted?" Varric drops three thick books into Solas' lap, this breaks the intensity of his scowl.

"Do I always look troubled, Varric?"

"Always." Varric props himself against the wall, crossing his arms across his broad chest.

Solas makes a small noise, short of a laugh. He makes the conscious effort to soften his expression.

"Maybe troubled isn't the exact word– _bleak_ is more precise."

Again, Solas releases a sound of amusement, fingers curling around the edge and spines of the books.

"Bleak. Ah..." He winces. It isn't far from the truth. It takes a very bleak man to disrupt the order of things– unraveling the fabric of the world has become an obsession.

Lavellan's marked hand dangles over the cot. A brutal reminder that he does not intend to integrate her into his plans. He's seen all of the possible outcomes and every solution that ends with her, it's at the expense of compromised pride. So he stopped trying to solve the riddle of her mortality.

"You know what I admire about you, Solas?" Varric begins. He walks towards the bookshelf.

"I'd be glad to know." Solas' smile is heavy. Whenever he thinks about Lavellan, he feels a supernal tug at his heart. Another oversight. One more mistake. Three steps back.

"You're not a perfect man, none of us are, but you're good at pretending. In a good way I mean. I don't know what all you've been through, but your confidence inspires me."

"Is it enough inspiration to write me as a hero in one of your stories?"

Varric chuckles, his shoulders rising and falling. Then he lowers his chin, thinking deeply. His cheeks gain color.

"Yes. Enough to be a hero." The dwarf rests his hands on his hips, setting his eyes on the unconscious wild elf. She's slept like a corpse for days.

"I'm undeserving but flattered." Solas feels something close to guilt. He's been feeling a lot of bothersome things lately. It's made the process much harder.

He's been among mortals for too long.

They both smile at each other. Very real smiles with separate meanings. Varric guides himself from the wall, dragging his hands along the dusty bookshelves.

"Don't stay up too late, Solas."

"A troubled, bleak man doesn't sleep."

Varric heaves one last genuine laugh before leaving Solas to his work.

Resting his chin on his knuckles, Solas swings his attention from the door to Lavellan's still body. He slowly sinks into his chair, the books slightly unfolding in his lap as he stretches one leg.

Stepping into her dreams is more intimate than accidentally allowing his fingers to linger on her skin for too long. His curiosity initially started with a 'why'. Out of all the more capable people in Thedas, _why this one_? Sometimes he likes to believe that things just happen, but prophecy is just as old as his namesake.

Simply believing that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time is too easy.

What he finds in her dreams is that she has managed an eternal beauty that he can only aspire to mirror. Her dreams are so vivid, Solas can taste her tears as if his lips were against her face. Rivers with no foreseeable end. Waterfalls that never reached a bottom. To his surprise, she has more imagination than he would ever give a Dalish credit for.

It's wrong to invade her privacy but it is also wrong that she holds some of his power.

But he can't help but sink himself further into her mind– Solas has to know what kind of person he has allowed to stifle him.

 

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've rewritten this thing a million times and hopefully I'm satisfied with this version. I'm going to force myself to stick with it. I've noticed a lacking of SolasxLavellan in the early stages of their relationship. It's usually always after Trespasser or immediately after he breaks up with Lavellan. So I'm going to try and do something different and just chronologically write short drabbles leading up to him deciding he can't deal with his broody elf god feelings. I'm all about slow burns and couples that start off disagreeing with each other about everything.


	2. Pilgrimage

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She holds up her hand against the sunset, observing the webbing between her fingers. The mark had eradicated the lines of her palm– where her life line had once been, green streaks of lightning pulsated underneath her skin. Sometimes, the pain would reach her elbow. Not only had it erased the lines in her hand, but it had seared away the strokes of her vallaslin around her arm.

Ellana grimaces because in a way its foreboding and it's hard to not think that she could implode at any moment. _Her own personal blight_ , she likes to think of it.

Every day, she feels the internal echo of the mark chewing away at all traces of her identity. First went her name. Knife ear to Inquisitor. Then her home. From the sinewy confines of the forest, she's been thrust into something like civil society. Where magic is debatable but war is a necessity.

Like a shoe too small, it doesn't fit.

Their camp, _not hers_ , sits at the edge of a creek overlooking the rocky hills of the Hinterlands. Their tents remind her of little boxes with pointy tops, incomparable to the artistry the Dalish took pleasure in when it came to their homes. The human lifestyle feels temporary. They live their lives like people who could never fathom multiple lifetimes.

It's wrong to think so little of her comrades, but old prejudices don't die over night. Ellana eats, sleeps, and dreams next to them as if they have supplemented her family.

"If you don't eat, your stomach will eat itself." Cassandra sits across from her. Ellana drops her hand and gapes down at her untouched bowl of stew.

"My stomach eating itself is the least of my problems."

Cassandra doesn't laugh. She continues to stare pointedly at Ellana as if she were regarding a foe in battle. Varric had insisted that Cassandra is this way with everyone but her irritation feels specific. _The excitement of her desperation_ , he had said.

But Ellana cannot blame Cassandra for her reluctance. Very few trusted elves, especially the Dalish. Sharp eared rebels. Feral heathens. To think, one bony kneed Dalish girl would be picked by their beloved Andraste.

If anything, Ellana sympathizes with her anger more than she shies from it. The Maker has an awful sense of humor.

Harding clears her throat after swallowing a mouthful of stew. "Inquisitor, your comfort is our priority. If you are weak, then all of us are weakened."

"How fatalistic..." Ellana drawls sullenly, dipping a finger into the stew, stirring the potatoes and carrots and nug meat.

"Indeed, the state of our world is despairing." Cassandra grumbles. The fire crackles and the sky darkens. Varric dips the ladle into the pot to help himself to another serving.

"I'm no child­– I simply do not wish to force an appetite."

"Then don't." Varric taps the spoon against the cooking pot.

"Oh I won't." Ellana scoffs.

Harding's eyes swing from Cassandra's disapproving scowl to Ellana's distant vacancy. Her cheeks color pink. "It's been a long day for all of us."

Ellana sets the bowl down and rises. Her joints crack as she stretches.

"Maybe Solas is hungry." Harding snaps her fingers. Sometimes her optimism is contagious, but it doesn't work this evening. Cassandra's 'excitement' has poisoned the air.

"If I see him, I will ask." Ellana saunters off, carrying the weight of Cassandra's judgment on her shoulders. It's enough to break her back.

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It's so strange how inconsequential her life had once been now that she is heralded as the bringer of change. If the world collapses, it would be her fault but being someone's hero isn't any more desirable. One would think, becoming the Inquisitor would add meaning to her once meandering existence, but she might as well be surrounded by ghosts. Once you become an idol, people tend to strip away your humility. Humility is no longer a personal right. It's disingenuous even when you're not pretending.

The quickness of it all left her with a sense of dizziness. Ellana had always considered herself a person of responsibility up until now. Within her clan, she waited for opportunities to prove herself. Where she lacked in magic, she made up for it in the hunts. But she has always been invisible and peculiarly small even by elven standard.

When the camp fire is no longer visible through the brambles, she leans against a tree, holds her stomach and vomits– burning her throat and her nostrils.

_How does one go from one lonely life to the next? This isn't how it's supposed to be._

She wipes the tears from the corners of her eyes, pressing her tongue against the back of her throat to relieve the dry sensation. Her armpits are sticky but the air isn't hot. It's rather cool for the season.

The sun belts the horizon with a faint glow. It's dark enough for the wilderness to fall into complete shadow. Ellana steps back from her puddle of bile, sniffing until she can catch a proper breath.

When she looks up, she meets the wide-eyed stare of Solas. Despite the darkness, she can make out the shifting expressions on his face. Disgust then embarrassment and finally solicitude. For a while he's silent and that while feels like forever. He white knuckles his staff, sliding his hood from his head, opening and closing his mouth before he decides on a very unassuming, "Are you alright?"

Unassuming in that he's not exactly judgmental, but he keeps the distance between them, averting his eyes.

Ellana straightens her posture, gripping the hem of her waistcoat.

"As alright as anyone can be." She licks the corner of her lips.

Another silence thicker than the last. If she knew how to tell him she were lonely in her lost language, would she gain his respect? Would that give her sadness palpable multitudes? Solas has never seemed interested in her habits and that alone made him somewhat alluring. He remained indifferent about anything that had little to do with him. And if he wasn't indifferent, he did a good job at pretending to be distracted.

" _Ar'm abelas."_ Her accent is broken, weak, tumbling from her mouth unnaturally.

Solas smiles weakly. His eyes appear wet in the darkness slightly penetrated by the rising moonlight. Still, he doesn't look directly at her. Like he physically can't bring himself to do so.

She repeats herself again with false confidence– re-emphasizing with clarity.

"Nothing to be ashamed of." He waves a hand. It hurts her feelings that he responds in the common language. It causes her to feel even farther from him. She shouldn't feel this way because he is a stranger and elves aren't obligated to like other elves.

"Too bad I'm still ashamed." Ellana digs her nails into her arm, suppressing the rest of her misplaced feelings.

"Are you hungry?" She says a little too loudly.

Solas blinks and presses his lips in a hard line. His brows wrinkle. Before he shakes his head Ellana's anxiety gets the best of her. "Good! Varric is a terrible cook!"

 _Silly, unthinking, Dalish girl_ – she imagines his voice along with his befuddled expression.

"Terrible. Downright atrocious." She feigns a shudder.

"Then I should feel less like a criminal for missing out." He says reassuringly.

" _Vin_." Ellana nods her head rather stupidly.

As he shifts his weight from his staff, Ellana finds herself admiring the shift of his shoulders under his tunic. He's so much more taller than she, reminding her of an ancient tree. Untouched, unmarred, and devastatingly beautiful. Much like he doesn't belong to their time– what the Dalish called _old-souls_.

His appeal is cruel because he doesn't seem to try.

"Solas?" She speaks abruptly.

"Inquisitor?" It startles him.

"Where do you come from?"

"Inquisitor, I don't mean to be... _curt_." He definitely means to be–does little to extend an air of casualness between them. "But I happen to be preoccupied."

" _Ma halani_." She hopes this is how you say 'please' but it is evident that she is wrong in thinking so when he finally settles his eyes upon her. Ellana draws near him, but not too close. Close enough to better make out his distinct features.

"Alright." Solas drums his fingers on his staff, stealing his gaze away, turning his head in, what she suspects, no particular direction. Her face burns when he doesn't bother to correct nor praise her for trying. Perhaps she is wrong for projecting her loneliness onto him.

Solas begins to walk and gestures for her to follow, albeit hesitantly. Yet Ellana doesn't care if she has invaded his personal space. Her heart bursts with a temporary happiness. For each of his long strides, she takes three quick steps just to keep up.

"So?"

"I'm from a tiny village. I'm going to assume you were expecting something much more spectacular."

"No. Not really." She truly had no expectations.

"None at all?" He snorts incredulously.

"You sound disappointed."

"No." He says winded.

Overhead, beams of moonlight split through the canopies, drenching them both in twisting shadows and specks of light. Much to Ellana's dismay, there's yet again another pause in their conversation. If it could even be considered conversation.

"If you could have anything in the world, what would you want?" It shoots out of her.

"That is a very tedious and uninspiring question, Inquisitor." He keeps his focus ahead of them in the dark. When Ellana stops hearing the croaking of frogs, she realizes that they have wandered further away from camp.

"I don't think of such things."

"For one moment, _Solas_ , put aside your worldly wisdom and indulge me."

Surprisingly, he stops walking and Ellana collides against his arm. Solas inhales, closes his eyes, sags his shoulders.  A sliver of moonlight captures his neck and she watches his throat bob when he swallows.

"Anything in the world?" He makes the question sound fatalistic.

" _Vin_." She nods, forgetting to smother her delight.

Solas gives her a real smile for the first time in their arduous journey together. For a fleeting moment, it feels as if he's truly seen her when their eyes meet. Even if his gaze is a little distant. She becomes less of the Inquisitor and more like herself.

"Freedom." Solas says matter-of-factly.

"Freedom?" Her nose wrinkles. She had anticipated something rawer– more primitive but bursting with insight.

"Is that not a good enough answer, Inquisitor?" His smile shortens as he arches a brow.

"No. That's not it." She waves a nervous hand. "I just..."

"There is nuance to that answer. I swear it."

She becomes lost in his soft expression. Immediately she gets the sense that he embodies purpose she has long been without. People shouldn't be the puzzle pieces to one another, but her desire to be near him she realizes is instinctive. Or sheer stubborn will.

"Care to elaborate?" The words are too big in her mouth.

" _Vin_." His elegant accent penetrates her soul. That feeling you get when you can't shake an attraction, even if it's not mutual, she feels it ten folds in her stomach. Her heart swells, filling the silence that makes her head a dizzy.

The rational part of herself acknowledges that what she feels is a symptom of her gross girlishness. Solas picks back up his pace and some deeper part of herself tells her that she is foolish for sauntering behind him. She waits for him to speak. Every moment he doesn't her eagerness expands.

"Before the Veil, you could feel the stars."

"Literally?"

"Quite literally."

"In what way?"

Solas pauses as he picks through his thoughts. The shadows hide the upturn of his lips, but she can hear his smile. It speaks to her like an old familiarity.

"Like breathing on your neck or feeling a pulse against your palm."

"The sky can't breathe, Solas." Ellana sucks air into her mouth.

"Does it not seem to breathe? Have you ever stood in a thunderstorm?"

"Yes, but I think you're being incredibly idyllic."

"Or you're lacking in a little faith, Inquisitor."

"How would you know what the sky felt like before the Veil? You weren't there. There's nothing wrong with healthy skepticism."

"And what exactly would the Dalish know?" The severity of his tone squeezes around her heart. She's without words for some time, following him to seemingly nowhere.

"Just as much as you." She doesn't speak with the same confidence.

"I doubt it." His passivity stings, but she doesn't allow her hurt feelings to get in the way of this rare show of vulnerability.

"What does that have to do with freedom, Solas?" She loves saying his name. Every time she does it earns more meaning.

"Imagine a world where it's possible to feel the sky and you tell me."

"Like changes in one's mood?" She waits for him, starring up into the sky. Ellana attempts to imagine the twinkle of a star harmonious with the pulsations of her heart.

"You have quite the imagination..." He says sardonically and she wonders if he meant for it to sound so condescending.

The wind combs through her scalp. She doesn't immediately drop her chin to look at him, fearing she might truly melt from shame.

"Solas, can I be completely honest with you?"

He waits for her to speak.

"It feels as if I have had no say so in what is happening around me." She lifts her marked hand. "I don't think I've ever truly been in control of my life."

"I think that is a very normal feeling. Duty and what we truly desire can never exist harmoniously." He nods his head, as if she had finally said something he deems insightful. " You've been invisible your whole life, but now every crack in the world covets you in some capacity."

Unconventional and unlikely in every facet she is. An elf that humans look to for security. _In what world?_

"So you understand me, Solas?"

And for some reason, her words cause him to stiffen. Something in him halts– either he has figured something out or she has finally gotten on his nerves.

Solas holds his head down, doesn't allow her to see his face. It's the most obvious show of his feelings she has ever witnessed.

" _Vin_." He says quietly.

Ellana gets the feeling that they are both forsaken. In many different ways, she is almost sure that she is more culpable than he is. For she is nothing but a simpleton parading around as a hero. A charlatan if not a simpleton.

At some point, they lost their desire to speak with each other. Words were useless and Ellana had gotten so little out of him. Then she begins to question why she has allowed herself to become lost with him in the wilderness.

Eventually Solas stops at the mouth of a cave.

"Before we _happened_ upon each other, I had sensed an artifact."

"I suppose I've been nothing but a distraction." Ellana turns inside of herself.

"You have." Solas taps his staff against the ground, turning to face her. She looks at him with her lips slightly parted,  revealing the small gap in her two front teeth.

"But not all distractions are necessarily bad." With his eyes, Solas holds her in a trap that she doesn't want to escape, and motions for her to stand beside him.

" _Abelas_..." She hesitates.

" _Garas_." He insists, stepping back to grab for her hand. Her shoulders fall and before he considers the barriers of their companionship, he betrays himself, reaching out for her, gently taking a hold of her wrist.

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The moment they cross the threshold of what separates mortals from spirits, Ellana feels the hairs on the nape of her neck rise. As she watches Solas artfully turn his hands to light the torches lining the throat of the cave, she sees something indiscernible from the familiar in the tendrils of his magic. It speaks to her, like she has known him for many stretches of lifetimes. Like a childhood hymn she should know, but age has distorted the meaning of the prayer.  The realization, or understanding, roots itself so deep in her gut that some strange desire to weep overcomes her, but she grips his staff hoping to fight off the tears.

Solas picks a torch, lifts it from the sconce– his lucid skin colored by the shuddering green fire.

"Are you sure you're well? It was quite insensitive of me..."

"I'm fine." She strangles.

"I was just a little overwhelmed..."

"I'm fine, Solas. _Ma telsila o...banal_." Ellana twists her tongue in her mouth.

" _Vin_." Solas stands straight, lowering his chin as he extends his arm for her hand again. Their fingers clumsily evade interlocking so their hands settle in a loose clasp.

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It wasn't just their ancestry that sealed an unspoken fellowship. Solas knew, just like he knew to breathe, that Ellana is some part of him that he has yet to discover. He places most of the blame on the mark he had sewn into her hand. It's only natural to be drawn to a vessel that extends outside of one's self. At least this is how he reconciles the dilemma. He remembers every useless detail he obtains about her, can recite conversations she's had in passing near him. At first, he found her mindless blubbering less than appealing. Though she is Dalish, she stumbles about like a human. Graceless (even by Cassandra's standards)and more often than not a little loud. In battle she is even more brutish. Her missteps more frequent than her easy victories. But the Inquisitor isn't a hopeless mess when she wields a blade.

Solas reasons with himself that craving the company of another elf isn't so bad. Humans do nothing but mutter and fight each other because their lives are so short. This isn't a matter of lowering his standards, it's a means to his survival. Physical and spiritual. He's thousands of years rotten but he's not beyond companionship. So much time has escaped him that he can't exactly remember how to properly kindle a friendship.

They finally reach the dead end of the cave. The artifact is wedged between two wet rocks, strangely it has a presence about itself– seemingly leering at them with its soft edges. It's a welcoming home sort of feeling that is undeniable. Ellana has never been more at place with herself.

Just like you can't grab air, she can't exactly pinpoint where the sensation begins to feel tangible and where it stops being the side effect of too much magic.

Solas releases her hand and kneels before the artifact. The embers illuminate the moisture that gives the it a glass like appearance–reflecting the curls of the pale fire.

"I have a feeling that I'm about to change your mind." Solas smiles at his own cleverness.

"Change my mind about what?" Ellana balances herself against his staff.

Solas turns his attention back on the artifact, hovering his hand above it. The artifact absorbs the magic from his palm. Green light starts from the base of its sphere and swells into a mist of tiny stars. The feeling of being here before, returning after a very long pilgrimage intensifies. Solas appears unmoved because it's evident that he has done this many times.

He steps back when the glowing mist stretches to the pointed ceiling wearing a satisfied grin. Solas has done this plenty of times before but alone– it means more to share it with someone unwillingly ignorant.

"What you feel now." Solas echoes her thoughts. "Imagine that tenfold. Imagine never knowing any other way to feel. Don't you feel complete?"

His magic instigates an opening–similar to petals unfolding to take in light. The stagnant cave exhales a silent _'at last'_.

"I feel like I've arrived in a way." Ellana's eyes follow the dispersed streaks of magic outlining the cave's weathered design.

"It's the closest we truly have to home here. There are sporadic pockets of it throughout Thedas, but there was once a time where it existed....everywhere." Solas' tone is oddly remorseful, but the 'we' inspirits Ellana.

"I admire your ability to grieve for something so old." As fast as the magic had aroused them both, it fades with the dwindling torch. "The state of things couldn't be so bad. We've lived without it for a very long time. Time changes..."

"Not all of us are so complacent. The Dalish mistake living a feral lifestyle for ancient wisdom– we were more than just mud, sticks, and stones and our baser instincts." Though his voice grows stern, his expression is still soft. Solas glares at the ground with pensive morose.

"You're too hard on the Dalish. Is it so wrong that we've cultivated a new culture to make up for our displacement? It's the city-elves you should turn your resentment to."

"Assimilated elves don't pretend to be something that they are not."

"But they most certainly aren't living their authentic lives."

"And you're certain that you have been living authentically? I guess we are both terribly judgmental." Solas moves his entire body to face her. Ellana's heart plummets into her stomach.

"How can you be so passionate about something you never really knew yourself?" She's not smart enough to counter him, but what she says spears him. His morose breaks into utter bereavement. Solas sucks in his bottom lip as if he has more to say, but he holds in it. His chest rises and deflates.

"Change cannot reach fruition without passion. We can both agree on that surely, Inquisitor?"

A bout of speechlessness crawls between them. The wind is voiceless in the cave. They are trapped in a purgatory between the past and present. The future as endless as the sky– magnitudes that neither of them are capable of conceiving in this era.

" _Vin_." It hurts to watch the eagerness leave Solas' body. With the magic, his energy falls sullen. His stance becomes languid.

"We should be on our way." Is all he says as he steps past her, gently taking his staff from her hand.

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	3. Modesty

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Solas avoids her. When they share the same space, his lips wrinkle whenever she opens her mouth, as if it's painful to hear her speak.

If she were more confident, she would approach him with a scrolls worth of his displeasing traits and emphasize how silly his ears look when he talks  _at_  a room full of people. In red ink– her own blood if she could materialize her frustration into a blade.

Over something so minor as her _backwater_ opinions...

Escaping the wrath of Josephine’s disapproval, Ellana hides in a tree, peeling a pear rather aggressively as she muddles over Solas’ pomp. The thought of home hurts her head so it's easier to magnify how much of a misfit she is amongst the Inquisition. The wooden huts are too damp, rotting from the early season ice and mud. Patches of mushrooms jut from nooks and crannies. Haven, with its imperfectly thatched roofs and puffy chimneys, could never compare to the smell of freshly died linen, the peeled skin of their baser instincts and wild berries squished between their fingers. The history her clan knit around fires kept them humble, anchored, and secured.

Dying tree limbs sag around the huts with unhappy awareness.

She misses their billowing flags. If she weren't illiterate, she'd write to her family. If they weren't also incapable of fully understanding the queer lettering of common man, she'd have incentive to learn how to read and write.

Sometimes the security the gesture offers is appealing but she's too prideful to ask Josephine to properly forge her a letter. It would not only be a waste of their time but a waste of Josephine's nice way of speaking to people.

Beneath her she hears the clanking of glass against. The moment she cranes her neck, she immediately regrets it when she sees that it is Solas carrying a crate of bottles of varying sides and multiple colored contents. Ellana slides a cut of pear skin into her mouth, pressing her thumb against the sharp side of the knife. Raising the blade, she shuts one eye and imagines the tip of the knife spearing the center of Solas' muscled back.

And he halts suddenly like the higher powers had warned him of the target on his back.

Carefully, always a little too meticulous, Solas settles the crate next to the front door of his hut. The huddled bottles clatter. He straightens his back and stretches.

The golden leaves absorb Ellana the same way flowers recognize sunlight. Taking a wide bite into the pear, she observes him, searching for a new detail to dislike to compensate for her desire of his approval. Crows overhead take flight, their feathers combing through the leaves but Solas stands still for a long period of time. Perhaps the higher power isn't speaking to him at all, for he does not turn his head up in her direction.  
  
In this moment, he changes. It's a subtle shift visible when his arms linger in the air, curling his fingers as he cracks his joints. Ellana hoovers the pear away from her lips, sitting up against the bark.  
  
Solas drops his head from the sky and looks to his side with what looks like despair between the twisting twigs and rods of sunlight.  
  
Its an expression she never fathomed capable on his stolid face. He drops his arms and he forces a short smile, when Josephine approaches him. Completely eclipsing the momentary sadness- quick enough that Ellana wonders if she had simply day dreamed it.  
  
“Have you seen the Inquisitor by any chance?” She huffs. Her silky accent makes her short breathing romantic.  
  
“I have not.” He wrings his hands. One of his more prominent quirks.  
  
Josephine flattens, expressively out of her character. She presses her hands on her hips and shakes her head.  
  
“I’m truly beside myself. She’s been purposefully evading our council.” Josephine loses the rise of her bosom.  
  
Ellana anticipates Solas’ cruel honesty. Takes another huge bite out of her pear. The crunch of her teeth sinking in its pith startled the few remaining crows perched over her head.

Solas doesn't respond at all. His brows crinkle quizzically. When Josephine realizes that what she wants him to say is only her singular thought, she clears her throat.

"I was hoping that...maybe you could _perhaps_..." She drawls 'perhaps' honey-like. Varric had describes Josephine's lilt as poetry without depression. Ellana realizes what he means. "...encourage her?"

"Encourage the Inquisitor?" Solas frowns.

 Maybe Varric is wrong– if Solas cannot be moved by her innate poise and fine small talk, could Josephine truly be all that bewitching?

" _Mhmmm_ ~" Jospehine smiles with self-assurance, lacing her fingers behind her back.

There's a long pause. The time between Josephine's hum and when Solas finally speaks is filled by the bustle of Haven's occupants. Chickens clucking. Barrels being rolled. The ringing of a hammer against steel.

"You're asking me this because we are both elves?" Solas' voice is dry.

Josephine hesitates but nods as if it were the best of her many bright ideas.

A chunk of pear flesh hangs in Ellana's throat. It takes the strength of her ancestors not to cough.

"Unfortunately, I have as much in common with the Inquisitor as fire does water." He derides.

Josephine's shoulders hang with disappointment. "Then have you any guidance? The severity hasn't seemed to sink into her yet. I fear it won't. Am I cruel for doubting?"

Solas takes her transparency considerably well. He doesn't shy away nor does he visibly display any of his ill feelings. Ellana knows it's in him to be scathing. She squints to search for it but she's too high up. The sliced chunk of pear slides down her throat.

"You do realize that you're expecting order from a Dalish? What you know of their culture–the substratum of their beliefs isn't an exaggeration. You're asking a child who has abstained from luxuries to not eat with her dirty hands, but with forks and spoons and butter knifes." His voice is colder than the air.

Ellana tenses at the thought of being seen as a child. She brings her knees into her chest.

Josephine says nothing.

"I might find their habits unsavory, but you cannot immediately expect change from someone whose avoided your wars for so many years. To her, your ilk are the barbarians and that is where I sympathize with her. Even if I do not agree."

She's unsure if she should feel endeared or disappointed with his statement. Though he defended her, he still does not hold her to a high standard. Josephine doesn't readily agree or disagree. Her expression changes from thoughtfulness to unflappable.

"I suppose you are correct." Josephine sniffs.

"I am." Solas punctuates their uneven convictions.

Ellana snorts for Josephine who concedes with nothing more than a nod, and she dismisses herself. Solas had won a one sided battle. He waits until Josephine is out of sight before turning to open his door.

Never in her life had Ellana housed disdain for an individual while maintaining a wicked fascination. It's unfair, really, that he has the capacity to understand her (like an adult understands the temperament of a child), yet she can't conceive beginning with the root of his indomitable vanity.

 Solas closes his door and Ellana tosses her pear from the tree, missing her target by a few feet.

 

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	4. Teeth Gnashing and Wide Open Mouths

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A tavern is supposed to be a place of anonymity. Under the influence of instinctive sin and ego, men become the base of a painting– colorful droplets mixed until they blend a muddy brown. A tavern is also a place where men are expected to disappear. Be it by elves who still long for the days they sacrificed humans or the outcome of a bad gamble.

Solas likens taverns to slaughterhouses only because he thinks rather highly of himself. Regardless of the fact that he's placed himself in the belly of degeneracy.

The wind whistles through the gaps in the stones that hold this hell house together, but only a sober man can feel the flakes of snow melting on his cheeks. An old man who reeks of sweat and smoke bumps against Solas, unwittingly tilting his mug of mead into the fur of his tunic.

And he can no longer begrudge them all for being the poor drunk sods that they are. Now he too smells like them.

"So what's it like– to behold the very bowels of men's depravity?" Dorian claps a heavy hand against his back and he suppresses a cough.

"I've witnessed worse...and men are capable of far worse but less embarrassing crimes."

"Worse? Ah yes. I suppose politics are much uglier." Varric slumps into the stool next to him, his leather stretching against his bearish shoulders as he rests an elbow against the snow peppered table.

"I can't blame them for being simple." Solas grimaces at the women pilfering from the pockets of the unsuspecting drunks.

"Simple? Think you're any more complex?" Dorian's laughter is guttural, comes straight from the bottomless pit of his soul. It stifles the room for a very brief moment.

"On to casting stones it is then, Dorian?" Varric glances at Solas.

And Dorian laughs again, his upper lip is invisible under the curls of his thick black mustache.

"Won't be any of that. It's not fair to kick a friend when he's down." Dorian gestures at a woman with a healthy bosom for a mug of his own stale vices.

Solas pauses with his mouth open, witlessly bitter. For good reason, but it's all at his own causation. He drums his fingers against the table.

A moment of silence placates their moods. Dorian throws back his mug as if he's drinking a bucket of water. Mead spills from the corner of his lips, trickling down his chin, washing away the remaining flecks of snow.

All at once, Dorian completes the work of art at hand. Women in purposefully loose bodices and the men clinging to their hips because the ground is too slippery for their feet. Funnily enough, Dorian fits in like a boot that was never truly missing. The fire pit line's his silhouette, anchoring him in a way to the ugly surroundings. Their skin catches the light of the flames– shimmering beads of sweat, slicked in a hard day's work. Some are pock marked with bruises.

"I guess Harding's got the Inquisitor all tied up." Varric folds his arms, contemplating if he should join Dorian.

"Ahhhhh our dear Inquisitor!" Dorian licks his lips and smiles brightly. "She's got quite the sense of humor. From a distance she looks boyish enough to be my soulmate– alas a man she is not once you've gotten a good look at those lips of hers. The Maker does not want me to be happy!"

"Her lips, Dorian?" Varric rests his chin on his knuckles, propping his other hand on his hip.

"Damn right, her lips!"

Solas resolves that he can no longer endure the strangled moans of the bard. The tavern erupts into a song that he hasn't heard in many many years. He straightens himself next to Varric, expanding his chest out as a mannerly habit when making a point.

"How appetizing you do or do not find her lips has nothing to do with fixing the hole in the sky." Solas massages the bridge of his nose.

"Solas, as a man, an elfy one of at that! The elfiest I've ever had the pleasure of knowing– you're not going to deny that our Inquisitor has a fine set of feminine lips!" Dorian leans a little closer, Solas leans back.

"What makes lips feminine?" Varric leans in too. Solas suffocates in the middle.

"Have you ever watched the way she speaks or chews food..." Dorian burps.

Solas rises from his stool. "I must pardon myself. Suddenly I feel ill."

Varric and Dorian share a look– Dorian's face wrinkles smugly first.

"As you wish my good friend!" And neither of them argue with him.

Solas hastily steps away from the two, steps around the reeking bodies until he reaches the archway of freedom.

He steps outside and the world smells normal. The unending smell of grass and decaying life under the thin piles of snow. The weight of the smoke like energy of the tavern goes up in the cold wind.

"Solas..." Her voice steals the comfort of his heart settling in his chest. His body acts before his brain and he readily faces Ellana, and his eyes immediately find her lips.

Three heads shorter, Harding stands with her, ogling up at Solas' wavering demeanor.

"Retiring early?" Ellana says after a drawn out silence.

And he can't help himself. Whatever infests the tavern had latched itself onto him. In his stupor, he realizes how her mouth never really closes.

"Yes. Unfortunately I'm not fit for belligerent company..." Solas' ears burn scarlet.

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	5. Peeling Back The Skin

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It's not the first time she considers what separates mortality from simply being human. Although Ellana is smaller than Cassandra, there are notable differences in the way they stand. What they've inherited can't be eroded by time. Cassandra's wide hips and muscles can only ever be human. There's nothing more to surpass. It didn't matter how much iron she melted to obtain a bigger sword or if she attempted to carry a mountain on her back. The mountain would squish her. _The Maker_ gave her inferiority and softness. If Cassandra became anything else, she'd cease being human.

Yet it feels unfair to reduce her comrade to what she can never achieve. Ellana very well couldn't carry a mountain either– _though there was a time when she might have been able to_.

The smell of smoked pork penetrates the stone walls, soaks into the old wood of the stables. Ellana doesn't think she's very good at being the Inquisitor, but she has mastered the art of vanishing. No one ever seems to notice how she deflates when there's more than one person to please in a single room.

Cassandra knows how to disappear as well and this is what they both have in common.

Ellana flattens her back against the cold damp wall, completely voiding her sense of duty. Clearing her throat, she raises her golden goblet to her lips and eyes Cassandra who stares beyond the rising smoke of the fire pit. In a way, she transcends the celebration, extending somewhere far more important. Ellana thinks, maybe Cassandra is stuck in a past battle field.

"You know what I've noticed about your emperors, lordly like men or what have you..." Ellana closes her eyes and attaches her whole body to the stones. Sinking and sinking. Hoping to evaporate.

Cassandra stays silent, holds her arms folded across her chest. She frowns like that's all she really knows what to do with her face.

"They are like empty shells of debauchery. It's like having everything you could ever want makes you vacant....joyless."

"What a sad story. Is it about me?" Cassandra snorts.

"No no...!" Ellana's pitch heightens.

But there's a blast of cool air that unwinds Cassandra. It erodes the sullen expression from her face. As if she has been holding it in, Cassandra releases a long suspire. The Chantry's walls aren't thick enough to conceal the music. A group of villagers pass them, slamming their mugs together and warbling.

"It is hard to do good– to think you're doing the right thing while simultaneously obliterating lives." Cassandra looks at Ellana."Sometimes I think there is no such thing as doing what's right. There's only more wrong. Inquisitor...am I self righteous?"

This startles Ellana. Her hold on her cup tightens. For the first time, Cassandra looks less a warrior and more like herself. In her silent pleading, she becomes soft and somewhat more feminine.

"I don't think so." Ellana smiles. "There's nothing wrong with passion."

Suddenly she thinks of Solas– everyone apart of the Inquisition has some kind of compass of motivation. Save for their Inquisitor.

And it's a horrible realization that she is the face of hope when she has little of it.

"Change can't reach fruition without passion." Ellana feels as aimless as a leaf riding the wind.

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But how should she go about finding her passion. Meaning has been thrust onto her at such a rapid speed, she has yet to sort out the nuance of being the Inquisitor, what it means to everyone around her, and what her absence means to her clan. Back home, she wasn't anyone of spectacular merit. Truth be told, if anyone were to ask her, she'd still say that she has no credibility.

The breach thunders and streaks of green crackle across the sky– _the sound of her heart exploding_.

No longer does Haven celebrate another victory. Everyone has taken the luck they have gorged themselves on and gone to bed. Haven sleeps like a graveyard, perhaps this gloom is only as recent as the breach.

Ellana strolls through the sleepiness because she cannot sleep, hasn't been able to in a while. And it's not obvious because she knows how to make do with the short amount of energy she has. No one can see that her sense of self is scattered. They had all taken a piece of her and now she is everywhere belonging to everyone that believes in her.

Solas' hut stands out to her in the dark. His window is the only one that is open and she can see the shadow of his footsteps at the bottom of the door. Ellana compels herself to confront him. He is the only person that doesn't seek her out and the only person that doesn't speak to her with a smidgen of respect.

And as much as it irks her, he's the only person that seems to understand that she is no one. She is of nowhere. He doesn't pretend that she is a leader while everyone else forces themselves to believe in such a tall tale.

Ellana bangs the heart of her fist against his door with no line of pursuit. All she has is her gumption and this strange desire to gaze at his face– to remind her that she is nothing.

Mid knock, he opens the door and she almost thwarts him in the chest with her fist. Ellana stumbles, straightening herself, building the courage to look him in the face. Solas gapes at her quizzically, mostly incredulous.

"Inquisitor?" He says with usual duty, if not reluctance.

A moment goes by and she freezes, mostly captivated by his effortless beauty, somewhat stumped because she hadn't any particular thought to share with him. A piece of her mind, she knows that much but what piece...?

She closes her mouth and her breath puffs into a cloud. The cold stings the inside of her nose. Solas' skin has a smooth sheen, as if he glows from within. It's strange how attainable he is but he lives his life so distantly– even by Dalish standards.

"Is it true that Andruil used her own hair to twine her bow?" Ellana's voice is a little too loud.

Solas betrays himself and forgets to conceal his surprise. First he squints as if she had asked him how to pull the moon down from the sky, then his face softens with what could be mistaken as delight. With Solas, no one ever really knows.

"That is how they tell the story, isn't it?" He unwinds and his height fills the entire doorway. Ellana swallows, nodding her head dumbly.

"Is it true though, Solas?"

"It is." He says impassively. "Do you wish to know more?"

Her eyes widen and she wonders if this is a mistake.

Does he pity her?

Is this another opportunity to catch her 'ignorance' and relish in her lacking counter arguments?

"Yes. Only if you want to share more."

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It takes a strong man to acknowledge that he is lonely without self-loathing. He's so close, and something tells him that this will be his mistake this time, but he is bursting with many dates and flavors that do not exist anymore– yet he sees and tastes them as if there isn't a millennium between his new and old self.

Ellana in many ways reminds Solas of a younger version of himself, but she lacks his conceitedness. Or, he wonders, if displacement has made all of _them_ soft. He readily concedes because there's so much he desires to share with someone who looks like him. He could tell one person the truth– she's the only one willing to listen.

"You wear Andruil's vallaslin." To his surprise, he doesn't grimace at the thought of her Dalish-ness. His stool creaks when he shifts his posture. Andruil serves him no fond memories simply because at one point in time, their egos matched.

"Yes. Supposedly she..."

"Supposedly? Do you suddenly not believe your own legends?"

Ellana chews the inside of her jaw. Solas sees his error and corrects himself.

"What is it that you doubt, Inquisitor?"

If she were forced to be honest, she doubts herself.

"I think my vallaslin is a mistake. I'm nothing like Andruil."

"Are you confessing to me?"

"In a way because some silly part of me expects you to understand, Solas."

They are quiet. The hearth crackles. Solas' wall is strung with damp paintings. All of them look like manifestations of his dreams.

Solas wants to tell her that she is right in that her vallaslin is a mistake and that she is nothing like Andruil, but that's a saving grace. Andruil was cruel. But they were all cruel in a similar fashion then. Even he.

"I don't blame you for having low spirits. It's painfully exhausting to carry the burden of many lives, but I don't think now is the time to lament your shortcomings." It doesn't feel right to say but it's all he can really muster. "And I do understand the reluctance of having such a responsibility."

Ellana stops staring at the wall behind him and holds his stare, and the change in demeanor perplexes him. Like all young women, she flushes. And it's so painfully obvious when her shoulders tense, that she can do nothing to hide her vulnerability. Immediately he feels bad.

"If you really put it all into perspective, we are the ones who survived." Her 'we' feels like a thousand dead bodies crushing his chest.  "But I don't feel like I'm representative of that."

"Then change how you feel." Solas gains a lump in his throat.

Ellana gazes at him with a hopelessness he's responsible for. He follows the lines of her vallaslin from her forehead until he can no longer trace them under her winter clothes. The snow melts into her scalp, the wild uneven cuts of her short hair glisten in the fire light.

Guilt can murder just a like sword.

"It's not that easy."

"I can show you where you...well...where _we_   came from, Inquisitor."

Ellana lightens, erects herself in her seat. "Show me?"

Solas stands from the small table and strides to a stack of old tomes. Ellana's heart tightens for this will be another insult to him. When Solas takes into his possession three books pulling from their spines, Ellana rises from her seat and knocks her stool over.

"Solas..."

He drops the books onto the table and his face mirrors her astonishment, lowering his chin, he waits for her to finish.

"I can't read."

Ellana cannot pick back up the pieces she has allowed herself to shed. The way he looks at her, she knows that she cannot sew her lips shut and run for his eyes tell her that he shall never forget such an avowal. Like he had stolen the secret from her, she clasps her hands around her mouth and proceeds to weep.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooo I hope you guys are satisfied with the drabbles so far and hope you all come to like Ellana's growth in each one. I've sorta taken some creative liberties that I hope are ok. Let me know what you think or what you'd like to see. Sorry its taking so long to get to the actual romance. I'm still trying to figure out when will be the right moment for them to realize that they like each other a little too much.


	6. Doors To Nowhere

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Something strange happens. Perhaps the stars have re-aligned themselves for when he looks up to find his way, he can't seem to recognize the sky. Whatever has happened, he doesn't feel the urgency to fix it, because he feels satisfied. And he hasn't felt this way in a long time.

"You talk about the past as if you were there." Ellana shoves the book back into his lap. The wind sweeps across the valley and the grass bends. He tries his best not to chastise her for not properly balancing letters between her teeth. In his attempt to not be cruel, he softens– in a sense she has watered his loneliness.

"I was there." He closes the book. The pages hang loose from the binding reminding him just how old he is.

Ellana arches a brow and purses her lips. She has this funny way of blowing air between the gap in her front teeth. "Sure."

"In the Fade of course." He sighs, back aching from sitting stiffly for too long.

"What else do you see in the Fade?"

Telling is never as satisfying as showing, but he holds it all in because if he shows enough– that enough could burst into _everything._

Solas takes a deep breath and Ellana listens.

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When there are long gaps in the time they are allowed to spend together, he catches himself ruminating over small things she has shared with him. Much like a child whose waited on a well kept secret.

From the time she cracked her tooth chasing a Nug to somehow daydreaming about her lips. The most feminine aspect about her, for everything else has been dragged and beaten by the weather. Accidentally, he breaks his stylus pressing too hard against the parchment– _Dorian hums acridly from his memories_.

And during those long breaks, when he is not needed for a task– those months feel as if they expand into unfathomable eons. Gods should be patient– normally a century is a rapid blinking day but Solas is deflated by his anticipation.

He's not yet sure if he loves that she doesn't interrupt when he's talking or if she's truly a spectacle for him to dig his nails into.

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Yet, she isn't so terrible! He stomachs her smile whenever he pleases her with new vital information.

"Really?" The Inquisitor would lose the harsh lines of a hard day and show him all of her teeth.

"Yes. Really." Solas adapts to her infantile language.

Too many words are troublesome. Too many words could muddy the water.

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Though it blooms almost too suddenly for him and this is when he knows that sleeping for so long has made him feeble. Solas has become so used to her popping in, more or less harassing him for old stories and truths. Often she will forget and he would repeat a story for the fifth time but he doesn't mind for it has lingered inside of him unprovoked for so long.

The Inquisitor requests that he join her on another task and he agrees eagerly because there's so much more that he wants to tell her about the old gods and the world before.

As he readies himself, in the middle of fastening his bag on his back, it dawns on him how wrong it is to entertain her. He can't tell her all that he wants to...

"We are ready." Cassandra's thick voice fills the airless room to the ceiling. Solas turns to look at her.

He nods compliantly and she turns away.

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 _But_ something magnificent has happened. The chains of his control slide from his grasp and to his surprise he doesn't jump to catch them.

It started with one of her simple 'Whys' and the answers are beginning to require that he show her.

All of their conversations magnify their circumstance. He penetrates her dreams with furious curiosity, without her permission, but he's never needed anyone's consent to do as he pleases.

From a distance he watches Ellana and sprinkles of the Fade bleed into her dreams. This could be his chance to repent, housed in one tiny person–his redemption. The possibility to make up for all of his faults tastes like a premature victory.

Almost too good to be true.

Something he doesn't quite deserve or need.

So he rejects what his flesh desires.

And it's just that simple.

To simply not want anything at all but the solace of his own headspace.

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Ellana clumsily reads a passage, dragging her finger under the words with wonderment.

Every time she pauses, her mouth never really closes, he's noticed more than a hundred times.

Although Solas is immortal, the man in him fights to supersede his magic.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't much of substance. I just wanted to update before I dive head first into updating my other works in progress.


	7. Being Colorless

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Outside of her clan, beyond many trees, people are colorful. Dorian's almost bronze skin next to Sera's papery pink tinge. Harding's freckles are like tiny footprints in the paleness of her scowl. And there will never be enough mud for Solas to mask himself in, for he is not pale or sun burnt. He is unchanging under all circumstances. When it rains, she can smell Sera's hair and the scent of the wet fabric soaking up her sweat, but Solas only smells like the dirt around them. Indistinguishable from the trees, the lake, the puddles, the mud, and the slick rocks.

It seems that Solas only exists in _their_ lives, but not in his own. Sometimes she wonders if he's even real at all. Have they all fallen sick to the same delusion? Solas leads them as if he's been through these trees many times before. He doesn't need a map. _He just knows_ – pointing his staff east. Harding and three scouts nod in agreement before dispersing.

 _"It's how I make myself valuable."_ He had told Ellana, but she has a sneaking suspicion that he loves indirect answers because it makes him appear much wiser than he lets on.

Sera drapes an arm over her shoulders, reels her in and whispers, "Watch this...."

If Ellana's skin was brighter, she'd burn red all over but she narrowly escapes suspicion with a huffy breath, damn near choking on her slice bread. Sera slinks from her side, combing her fingers through the hair of the horses as she makes her way to the wooden table in the middle of camp.

She stands beside Solas and slaps her hand down on the map.

" _So_ -las!" Sera clears her throat– she has this unusual way of speaking as if she has a mouthful of walnuts.

He regards her with no expression and for some odd reason, this startles Sera as a challenge. She slams her hand down on the table again, shaking the unlit candles and empty bottles.

"Is it true?" It sounds more like a baseless accusation than the beginning of a petty interrogation.

"Is what true?"

"Is it true that we elves all share a preee-dis-position to magic?" She begins to drum her fingers. The wind rolls the map towards her hand.

"Yes." Solas remains unflappable.

"Why is that?" Titling her head, Sera closes one eye and surveys him with the other.

"What does a tree have in common with a flower, Sera?"

Sera stands up straight, setting the map free– it furls itself and the air shuffles it from the table. The question stupefies her. Her face sifts through six expressions before settling on distrust. He has that effect on people– one can never know if he's truly passing knowledge or actively setting a trap.

"Are you try'n to trick me?"

"No. I'm curious to know what your answer might be."

"Nuh-uh!" She waggles a finger in his face. "You sure as tits aren't about to gull me into sounding batty!"

"I don't think you're batty, Sera. Not in the slightest bit." He says impassively but it only irks her more.

"Roots?" Ellana intervenes. Sera and Solas turn to look at her. There's a stretch of silence. From the distance, Harding shouts and order and hooves beat against the dirt. The flags twist. The tents flap.

"Roots." Solas gives a cursory nod.

"I was think'n that rightly!" Sera huffs.

"Magic is what binds us all together. An appendage of sorts if all else fails." He speaks with his attention affixed on Ellana's marked hand. She wonders if he sees **_it_** first before he sees her. She counts to ten until his eyes meet hers. For a moment he looks dubious, but it's so fleeting Ellana can't decide if it were her imagination.

"I don't agree." Sera says flatly. "If that were the truth, I could shoot Fade fire out the arse."

Another long agonizing silence before Solas directly looks at Sera and frowns.

"I'm not much of a martyr so I respectfully disagree with you on the subject." He shrugs his shoulders.

"We can all have opinions." Ellana sighs.

"It's not a matter of opinion. Sera just lacks the soundness to be privy of the truth. You know she's wrong, Inquisitor."

It occurs to her that Solas has only ever regarded her formally. He speaks so pointedly, it feels as if he has physically detached himself from the time they've spent together. Sera balks, opens her mouth to oppose him but today, Ellana isn't partial to his unnecessary cruelness. Even if it is _unintentional_.

"Good thing we elves aren't a monolith aye?" Ellana matches his coldness, but she's not as frigid. If anything she appears remorseful or disappointed.

"Right." Something familiar to pain, betrayal causes his inflection to be watery. Recognizing it, Ellana tries to correct her demeanor but Solas is everything but easily forgiving. That much she has learned about him. Rejection is like an assault on the fundamentals of his core persona. Sometimes she knows what that persona is. Sometimes it eludes her like his desire to be displeased with everything.

He fully turns away from them, passing the tents, brushing by an unsuspecting Dorian with his head in a spell book.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a minute. I'm in the process of finishing up another fic so I haven't been dedicating time to this. I've already stated this is a compilation of drabbles but I do intend for some pieces to be 3k words or more depending on the mood. Hope this was satisfying. Feel free to follow me on tumblr and shoot prompts at me. My tumblr is my pen name.


	8. 0.0

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_The sun sets and the sky bleeds. As the clouds sup the darkening reds of the horizon, screaming locusts remind the lesser ones that it is the warm season. And this night will be shorter than the one before._

_A frail elven woman hunches into the swaying reeds to wash her feet. The skin of her heel has thickened from her journey. Her welted ankles, the cuts in her soles sting as she fully submerges her feet into the water. In one heavy breath, she dispels the curses that have taken occupancy of the empty space in her heart. Bowing her head, she asks the Gods for their forgiveness– for she cannot help that it is in her nature to be crass when life is unforgiving. As it should be for mere mortals._

_Reader, you are wondering what posses a young woman to travel so poorly through the wilderness?_

_Redemption. Loneliness. Hunger._

_This woman seeks the temple of Mythal. She hopes that if she is steadfast enough, then her judgment will be agreeable. Mythal will pity her but will reward the cruel constitution of her piety._

_To further punish herself for being a poor servant and a wretched thief, she has fasted for three days._

_And if she dies of starvation before she completes her pilgrimage, then it shall simply be her well deserved fate. Defining her unworthiness._

_The petite woman stands. Her feet sinking deeper into the mud. The water doesn't quite reach her knees, but she hikes up her skirt so that she can feel the remaining bursts of sunlight around the slopping hills on her legs._

_She closes her eyes, musing a prayer, desiring away the dizziness of her appetite._

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Cassandra sighs into her knuckles, toes curling in her boots.

"What about this makes you unhappy, Varric?" Her voice warbles. She stands from her stool, lifting a hand to her massage her cheek. "It gives me this... _writhing_ sensation in my gut."

"Anxiety?" Varric drawls, dabbing his quill in his ink pot then furiously dragging a line through a sentence he's written five times.

"Yes! But much more _syrupy_!" Though she speaks lowly, Cassandra's voice vibrates with passion. So much passion, she forms a fist and stomps a foot adamantly. The candle light shakes when she moves swiftly to stand next him. "It is perfect!"

"It's the first draft." He sighs, melting into his chair. "You're not a writer."

"But I have enough confidence to admit that I am a quite the dreamer and this satisfies my imagination! I have the heart of an artist but the Maker gave me hands made for battle." Cassandra flips to the next page.

Varric doesn't deprive himself of feeling so he weakly smiles at her compliment. Another sigh, he taps his quill against the paper three times, spluttering ink.

"Be glad you're not an artist. No inspiration has a tendency to chip away at my self-esteem."

It is a very frank statement. He immediately regrets sharing his low opinion of himself. And it has nothing do with the observation being pitiful. He's ashamed because vulnerability is the main ingredient to confusion. The effortlessness of it scares him for a silent moment.

As a well trained warrior, she doesn't miss the reddening tips of his ears. His fleeting transparency startles her yet somehow it makes her feel closer to him. She's always felt an unspoken bond with Varric through his work, but to have a piece of him that isn't a contrived fairytale is even more satisfying.

"Does she have a name?" Cassandra leans against the back of his chair, smiling to herself.

"Not yet."

"Maybe that's what she is missing."

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm slowly going through and fixing all of my errors! MAN it's so easy to miss them.


	9. Empathy Is An Art Form

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Drops of rain slide down the back of his ears and down the nape of his neck. Solas hunches forward to pick an elfroot, taking a moment to enjoy the slipperiness of its leaf, reacquainting himself with his surroundings. Water drips from his brow but he doesn't grimace when the droplets seep through the reach of his long lashes.

Thousands of years worth of memories– Solas picks a specific moment before this place was called Crestwood. The elfroot surround a tree that's older than the memory itself.

 _"Will we ever be satisfied with the concept of home, Da Fenlin?"_ Andruil  speaks to him from many years ago, before he desired an upheaval. " _Ar'an felgara aron a elvyrlin_."

 _We expand like a disease_.

The memory is so vivid, he can feel the ancient sunrise under his soaked clothes. The weight of his rucksack becomes the crushing heaviness of his armor.

He never dreamed it would be possible to forget his own language. It's as pertinent to the soul as blood and bone. _Da Fenlin_. There was a time when he loathed it but he'd pay in buckets of blood to hear it again.

Solas tugs the elfroot from the ground. The fluid motion of his body causes him to sprawl his toes and the mud gathers between them. From his calves up to his knees, he's covered in dirt and leaves.

"Solas."

Sometimes his given name slides around in his mouth as foreign as unfamiliar fruit. It takes him time to respond because in the present moment, his heart has taken refuge in the ribcage of _Da Fenlin_.

Sliding the strap of his bag from his shoulders, he turns to face the Inquisitor. Her brown cloak is too big for her body, but so is her title. Solas wonders how she has been able to live for so long. He's already measured her life span.

"Inquisitor." He lowers his chin. Rain trickles down the bridge of his nose.

" _Thu ea_?" She grimaces. For what reason? He's unsure.

Solas loves her effort but hates the way she speaks the language. It should be what bridges the gap between them but the gap is too wide.

"I'm fine." He shrugs.

"You haven't seemed fine."

"I just find Sera exhausting and Dorian much too talkative."

"I think you just don't like people very much." She almost smiles but her mind seems preoccupied with a different matter. The Inquisitor isn't good at hiding her personal fears. Her worries are just as tangible as her sword. Solas considers it to be a good thing, for if she were not humble, the mark would be only the catalyst to more disaster.

She isn't the brightest star in the sky, but she most definitely isn't foolish. Over her head and over worked but never foolish.

"It's not that I don't like people..."

"They just aren't enough like you right? You're just hard to please." Her honesty clips him.

"If that's what you believe."

"I believe you're a  good man– the only of your kind, but you purposefully isolate yourself for...a reason I'd like to know but you're not obligated to tell me." Her shoulders slump.

The statement causes him to be thoughtless. He slings his rucksack back over his shoulder, meditating on her feelings. Opening his mouth, then closing, the opening again.

"I think the nature of your empathy is mistaken for conceitedness."

"Well, this wouldn't be the first time I've been told, Ellana."

She begins to say more but hearing her name eclipses her thought.

Solas doesn't wait for her to speak. He closes the distance between them, still holding on to the elfroot. He stops a foot in front of her, holds up the plant to her face without any particular words of wisdom.

As she tilts her head back to gaze at him, her hood falls down. Her hair has grown into thick black curls but it's not long enough to keep her ears warm.

"Consider this– you're a tree or a type of plant that's grown for many years. Everything around you changes but you stay the same."

"But you're not a tree or an elfroot." She drops her attention back on his hand and the elfroot, eyes widening.

"Indeed, I am not but I implore you to use some imagination."

"So you feel stuck?"

" _Vin_."

"You don't have to feel that way, Solas." She places her gloved hand on top of his. Twinges of magic spark from the touch, but they go unseen and unfelt by her. The mark amplifies his misplaced feelings.

Solas regards her with soft resentment but her attentiveness to detail, her desire for more endears him. They don't speak for some time. Ellana smiles up at him. The heart of her lips are lighter than the rest of her mouth. Her vallaslin cuts through the brown of her skin like lightning in a stormy dark sky, or a river cutting through a valley shaping mountains and hills.

She holds on to half of him, unaware that he is her prisoner.

" _Teleolasan_..." He mutters. She takes the elfroot from him.

" _Nuva mar’shos’lahn’en ir’tel’dera Fen’Harel_ _..._ for you walk in darkness, Solas." Her smile brightens but his skin blanches. With that, she steps out of their nearness visibly feeling a sense of reward.

The Inquisitor thinks that she's left him with comfort, but she has left him with a lingering punch of despair.

And though the trees separate them and the rain suffocates the sound of everything but the beat of his heart, he can't be rid of their attachment.

He blames the natural essence of magic but a small part of him fears that fate is more vile than he has expected it to be.

Solas is loath to admit that his expectations of her have risen above polite opinion.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I found this super awesome resource called Project Elvhen that's like a Rosetta Stone for Dragon Age. It's really nifty. Go check it out. It's on AO3 written by FinxShiral.
> 
> Anyhoot! I got inspired and decided to update! Any errors I've missed I will go back and fix later. I have a beta reader but she's not familiar with DA and I feel bad about forcing her to read about things she's not really privy to. Feel free to follow my tumblr and send me requests or whatever. ;u; I'm trying not to become obsessed with Fenris. My tumblr is the same as my pen name.


	10. Crucible

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With time, the fear of change goes away. Ellana is discovering that the more she exposes herself to violent circumstances, the instance of blood seeping from her  nose doesn't cause her to grimace. She's quicker when she draws her sword. In this era of her life, she has used her sword far more than her hardened compassion.

A strange alchemy has warped the contents of her soul. She is still capable of feeling but _barely_ – Ellana can only liken it to the phantom sensation of someone stroking the back of her neck...yet there is no one behind her.

"It could be your past self!" Dorian snaps his fingers.

"My past self?" Ellana gawks.

"Yes! We are always evolving, leaving pieces of ourselves in strange places. Sometimes knowingly, sometimes with complete awareness. You keep your piece in your pocket–simply forgotten that it's there is all." He sighs. The moment he looks up towards the sky, his mustache catches the first of many snowflakes.

Chewing the inside of her jaw, Ellana ponders on this unique wisdom.

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"Do you believe that all change is good change, Solas?" Ellana eyes him as he sorts through the Chantry's small selection of books. Before he answers her, he huffs a defeated sigh.

"I believe that most change starts with good intent." Solas' shadow stretches up the stone wall, reaching the ceiling. Teeth chattering, he rubs his hands together but he keeps his back towards her.

"I'm changing."

"And what are you scared of, Inquisitor?"

"I don't think it's a good change."

Solas stops thumbing through the book spines and glances at her over his shoulder. " _Ahnsul?_ "

There are moments when she doesn't want to believe in his concern because it's so frigid– but she accepts the way he is. Simply they aren't cut from the same cloth.

Ellana doesn't expect any more from him yet somehow she always ends up confronting disappointment.

"I'm not sure. I just feel different or like I'm missing half of myself..."

On the other side of the door, Josephine chases Cullen with a one-sided argument.  People step in and out of rooms. Laughter then whispering and the occasional sick cough because the air is cold and dry.  And of course the honey-like humming of mother Giselle.

Ellana lowers her eyes to the steel toes of her boots.

"I'm not feeling like myself lately either if that's any consolation." Solas' voice warms the entire room. The outside flattens to silence. Between the bookshelves and stacks of scrolls and loose pages, the space is too cramped for an echo, but she absorbs his timbre, sinks it under her skin until it all melts and seeps to her core. _Where her soul should be_.

"I don't expect you to encourage me. It's not your job to make me feel better about my place in the world." Ellana rubs a shoulder.

"I'm listening, which means I care enough to lighten your spirits."

"You say that, but I can't bring myself to believe you."

She now has his full attention. Solas faces her with a mournful expression. It's the most revealing he's ever been with her. It's a cruel power to have–to be able to move  her without touch.

"What's there not to believe?" He lightly shakes his head.

Instead of explaining herself, she sucks in a mouthful of air. Her chest swells under her waistcoat. Ellana has to reflect as he waits for her answer– how does she most candidly feel about Solas?

They are peers but there is a barrier between them, a high wall with a critter-filled moat.

"I'm just difficult." Ellana breathes. Solas looks as if he's about to challenge her but he closes his mouth. After a while of just standing, he continues to sift through a pile of dusty books. The atmosphere is thick with apprehension. Ellana allows it to suffocate her before she turns to leave.

She doesn't want to learn how to read anymore–she'd rather instigate a fake battle with Cullen or Cassandra. If should could step out of her shoes and, again, become that feral ignorant _thing_ was raised to be, she'd damn near cut her ankles off in excitement the moment the opportunity presented itself.

"Sometimes we can be the victim and the criminal when it comes to loneliness." Solas says without looking up from the books.

She presses her finger tips against the door before flattening her palms.

"What do you expect me to say to that, Solas?"

"I don't expect you to say anything. I just hope that you haven't misinterpreted my sympathy. Inquisitor, your losses are not my victories."

" _On nydha."_ Ellana gently shoves the door. If she pauses then she would be forced to subject herself to more disappointment. Wanting but not exactly knowing what she wants. Desiring but not having the appetite for the simple sake of desiring.

It's like eating but not being able to become full.

" _Son era_..." Solas' voice is clipped as the door shuts behind her.

Ellana starts with a hasty strut before making it down the hall in a sprint. No one seems to find it unordinary, for elves are naturally seen as queer creatures.

When she makes it outside, she chokes on a gasp as the icy air attacks the loose openings of her chemise. Where her waistcoat squeezed the life out of her, the white sleeves invite the cold and the chill assaults her with a ghostly purpose.

All elves possess a keenness for magic, but in her circumstance, the mark amplifies this natural ability. Ellana gets the nerve to look up at the green hole in the sky. Haven becomes a corpse. Still and without a pulse.

Everyone gazes at the mountain that lines the horizon; where the breach seems to touch whenever there is a burst of magic.

Life happens fast. So does death. Once again, fear gobbles up herself hatred, leaving no room for doubt.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All errors I miss I will eventually see and fix. If it was a little too vague, this is right before Corypheus decides to be a hating ass hoe and attacks Haven.


	11. An Incurable Deficiency

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It takes years to cultivate unflinching faith– as long as it takes to build a cathedral, but only a day or less to destroy one. Seemingly, the Inquisition's hard work is obliterated. Corypheus took lives in his jaws and plunged his teeth deep into the foundation of their small victories.

The fire came first then the snow blanketed the graves there after. Under all that snow, there are the dead bodies and among them is the Inquisitor.

Solas is a good liar. It's incredibly evident when Cassandra, of all people, looks at him with despair. There is no resolve in how she stares through him. Humans are so susceptible to their weaknesses, even the strongest of them. Like the ghosts of those who didn't make it, doubt sweeps across the disorganized encampment.

His lies are as paramount as breathing–yet they collapse in his chest. Indigestible food that water could not force down. For the moments that go on without the Inquisitor, the harder it is for him to swallow his own spit.

But the mark is still a distant pulsation attached to either a dead or living body. Solas doesn't allow what little regret he has taint his judgment. Logic supersedes sorrow. He's mourned enough for some odd thousands of years.

At some point, he would have to retrieve the mark– saw it off her lifeless body before the worst could happen. He maps out six different futures until he is nauseas. Before the worst though– he waits to breathe.

No one can feel the cold– their grief is too abundant.

"I don't know what's worse–our progress coming to an indefinite halt or the innocent lives? Which deserves most of my sorrow?" Leliana tosses wood into the fire. Her expression is empty.

"My thoughts exactly." Solas responds quietly.

"Am I wrong for thinking a few lives mean nothing compared to the larger threat?" She stares at the growing flame.

"Not at all."

Undeclared time passes. Leliana doesn't move from his side. They both watch the injured soldiers and few believers go back and forth–attempting to preserve their ritualistic duty.

"I'm glad I'm not the only one." Leliana finally says before walking away. The snow crunches under her heavy footsteps.

 _Are we bad people for seeking the next and soon after?_ That's what she was initially trying to ask. _Who has time to weep?_

Cullen shouts a command, voice cutting through the air, waking everyone from the aftermath of their unsolvable trauma. The confusion becomes stifled excitement and Solas follows behind three soldiers.

He's so good at his lies that he has managed to convince himself that he is, fact written in stone, detached from the madness that has accumulated over the years. Everything that has snowballed into the present.

The crowd parts just enough for him to witness a barely conscious Ellana dangling over Cullen's broad shoulder as he storms through everyone's curiosity, Cassandra fast on his heels demanding answers.

Solas feels an immediate wash of relief but also a very sharp pang of bitterness. He massages the roof of his mouth with his tongue.

"How long do you think a man can go without food and water?" The spirit of Compassion manifests at his side, but Solas does not flinch.

"Not too long, but long enough." Solas keeps his eyes on the tent Cullen whisks Ellana into.

"I think it's been long enough." The icy wind scatters Cole's voice.

Time is as real and tangible as a thick block of ice. It stopped being merely a concept for Solas the day he decided to burden himself with challenging the Maker.

So he makes another hard decision.

It would be a gamble of sorts, but nevertheless a very absolute conclusion to the huge hole within the future.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've acquired two jobs and that's where I've been for the past while. I spend my free time sleeping if not playing Overwatch. I've even slacked on my reading. I don't get days off. It's been a very stressful start to 2018 and I'm really sorry this is so short. It's actually been written for a very long time, but I just worked up the strength to finish it off with a paragraph more. I feel like anyone who has opened this fic and gotten this far might be disappointed because damnit why won't they just kiss and start the betrayal already but I don't know. I don't know why I'm so stubborn when it comes to ships. It's also really hard to cover events that the reader is already privy to without info dumping or being boring. I hope you guys are satisfied and haven't given up on me and this drabble style of storytelling. I will be going back to having one job soon so then I can dedicated time to being more productive and creative. I hope my Solas portrayal is still sound and easy to follow. Thanks guys for being patient. I'm itching just to get to the romance myself because gosh darnit they are gonna be so ridiculous and argumentative but madly in love for no good reason. lol


	12. On The Road To...?

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Ellana wakes at the realization that she isn't home. Before she opens her eyes, she reacquaints with her sense of smell. Burning wood and a familiar herb her mind can't put into shape or color. The mark hurts, but it has never not been a painful. One by one, she regains feeling in each finger, or rather becomes aware of each finger and each toe.

She turns her head towards the smell but a heavy pair of boots sits in the middle of her vision.

"You're either very hard to kill or absurdly stubborn." Cullen sits on a stool, hovering over her and the huge pile of furs her body sinks into.

Ellana licks her dry lips but doesn't have the heart to go back and forth with him. At her silence, he laughs weakly.  He stirs a bowl– the source of the smell. She's unable to decide if it's a good or bad smell.

Turning her head away from him, further she sinks into the musty blankets and furs. Or maybe it is she that doesn't smell too pleasant. If the cold couldn't hide it then it is just that strong and all the more terrible, but she doesn't care. It's only a fact that she smells terrible– not a tragic incident.

"I'm still here." Ellana rasps with a dry, itchy throat.

"That you are." Cullen doesn't seem to mind that she's putrid.

"I wanted to die."

"You deserved to live and live is what you are destined to do." This time he clears his throat.

"What we want and what we deserve typically aren't parallel." Ellana says to herself.

Cullen doesn't respond right away. He clears his throat and stares down into the bowl of _not-quite_ stew that Solas had suggested. The warmth of its steam wafts around his gloved hands.

"Destiny, I think, is what we simple people use to make ourselves feel important."

"You're being very loquacious for someone who narrowly escaped a horrible death."

"I have no clue what that word means." Ellana looks up at him, she moves to settle on her elbows but feels that she is naked under the bundle, and thinks better than to move so to not free the smell of her bruised body.

"I've been there before." He extends a hand to cup her forehead, gently guiding her back down. Ellana doesn't fight him back, but her eyes do water.

"That dark place is not somewhere you ought to stay, Inquisitor."

"Well, for as long as I live, I'm staying here. In this dark place."

"And what good will that do?" He keeps his eyes fixed on her.

"I can trick my body into believing it's dead, until I don't wake up." She knows she shouldn't be having this conversation with Cullen.

Cullen presses his lips together. Doesn't smile at her cynicism– won't frown, she suspects because of his manners.

"Don't let anyone else hear you speak in such a defeatist way." He brushes back her messy bangs, too delicate for the moment for Ellana's preference. Yet she does not protest. His hand emits so much heat. It warms her entire face.

"You can die of your own liking when all of this is over." Such a grave statement from such a neutral face.

"So my body doesn't belong to me anymore?" Ellana's voice is quiet.

"I never said that. I'm telling you that this weakness shall remain a secret between me and you. Pessimism attracts more evil. Evil has already taken a huge bite out of our hope."

So then yes. That is exactly what he meant– her body is no longer her own. Ellana doesn't have his composure. She frowns and jerks her head free from his hand.

"You should drink this." He stands and sits the bowl on the stool. Seemingly unfazed.

He stands there for some time, waiting for some kind of expressed solidarity, but Ellana doesn't give it to him.  She rolls over on her side and pulls one of the blankets over her head.

"May you have a speedy recovery, Inquisitor." He says tightly before leaving the tent.

She has the urgency to cry but she's too tired. Crying would exhaust the remaining power she had to think. Thinking is better than sobbing over a thing one cannot fix.

The conniption passes. She thinks until her mind darkens. The shadows become dark spots in her vision and then she falls into a very deep sleep.

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She dreams of a sky. Only a sky with no bottom.

Like what one would assume the inside of a crystal ball looks like.

The sky is a bright teal. Slivers of green snake in and out of the powdery pink clouds. Ellana sits on her elbows, hair floating upwards, her necklace rising and then she realizes that she is not looking up but down. In this dream, broken things float about the air as if someone had smashed a time piece to bits.

She feels like she could be here forever. A familiar magic coats her skin like the humidity of a swamp. Instead of protesting, she lays back down and observes the unidentifiable pieces floating over...or under her head like clouds.

Typically, her dreams are a sequence of happenings but this dream has no sense of time or place. Forever she is stuck in a moment.

And then she thinks of Solas. From then on, in a timeless pit of air, magic, and her voice outside of her head, he is all she can think about.

She believes that if she thinks of him enough, he will appear but he doesn't.

 _"This must be what freedom feels like_?" She says as if he is right next to her.

But he is not.

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She wakes up with a task. Her body feels fine as she shoves back the blanketing. The cold air sweeps across her nipples but she doesn't shiver.  Ellana looks at the bowl Cullen had left her, unsure of how much time has passed. All she knows is that she must drink it before she does anything else.

Ellana kicks her legs forward and reaches for the bowl, swallows it down like water, damn near throwing it back up but something has instilled in her to drink it. Before putting on boots or smalls clothes. She has to drink every drop of it. She obeys the innate inclination.

And when that is done, her body moves without her own mind. She must immediately gets dressed and head outside of the camp. _For what reason_? She will find out. Each task tediously hammers along in her head like a nursery rhyme from her childhood.

Ellana slings on her cloak, opens the flap of the tent and is greeted with a full moon. It is either the middle of the night or not too long before sunrise. No one is awake. All of the fires have been put out. Footprints in the snow crisscross between the tents.

Again, that supernal nagging urges her for the destination. Ellana steps out into the snow, indenting the white surface with her footprints as well, crunching along into the night. There are no trees. Just hills of sloping snow. _In the summer, this place must be valley_.

She plods along until she sees a figure ahead of her that she immediately knows is Solas. The internal demands stop nagging her and then she is free to feel how she wants. Her footsteps quicken as she nears him.

"Solas!" Her lips are cracked and it hurts to move her mouth.

"Inquisitor." He replies, pulling the hood of is cloak from his head.

"You bewitched me!" She says breathlessly, stopping beside him.

"That's a simpler understanding of it, yes." He doesn't smile and she straightens herself. He has something important to tell her. She knows this by his wrinkled brows.

She should be alarmed by his invasiveness but she can't bring herself to be upset.

"That's a terrifying power to have over someone." Ellana shakes her head.

He solemnly nods in agreement.

"We underestimate you." Her lips begin to bleed from dryness.

"I'm no one to be feared." He says lowly.

"No. You're not." Ellana rubs her shoulder for warmth.

They fall silent.

Solas can't pick from his thoughts how to articulate what he needs to say. He looks at his hands, as if the important things had been in his pocket all along. Of course, he finds nothing but the lines in his palms.

"I'm glad for your return." He looks at her and settles on this first. Her blouse hangs about her loosely, messily tucked inside of her belt. As she drops her arms at her sides, the shape of her breasts are visible.

Ellana parts her lips but resolves with saying nothing. She shrugs.

"I'm sorry the spell will only last for so long. You won't feel this well tomorrow."

"I don't think I will ever recover from any of this." She mutters.

Solas made the decision to try, but it's been so long since he's ever considered vulnerability. And it's cruel to deny her some form of intimacy. Ellana's fragility reminds him of the diaspora, the ramifications written all over her small body.

What holds him back is the fear of rejection. Not failure. Her personal rejection of him. Pride, what her people say, is what makes Fen'harel the worst. Perhaps that is one of the few truths muddied in the many lies.

"Was I in the Fade?" Ellana asks.

"Yes you were. You are always in the Fade when you sleep. Everyone is." Sagging his shoulders, he turns away from staring at the bruise on her neck and the fabric shifting around her breasts.

"And you made me aware?"

"Yes."

"Then why didn't you come when I called for you?"

A pause. Her eyes weigh him down.

"Didn't you just say that it's not good to have that much power...?" Solas' throat tightens.

Ellana grips his arm, his muscles tense under her fingers. She gives him a light tug as the wind sweeps her hood from her head.

"Yes but it is remarkable just as much as is it is terrifying, and so is this...journey of ours." Her voice rises and beckons him in a way.

Another long silence. Solas meets her gaze and his heart crumbles to pieces, emptying into his stomach.

"Then I will come next time. With your permission of course." He manages to smile. She smiles with him.

Solas gets a bout of courage. It's the power in how sincerely she acknowledges him. Even with clear sadness cutting across her features, Solas has her trust. He feels as though he hasn't done much to warrant it so and has gone through great lengths not to exploit it, but she's become beautiful in a wild unkempt way that's hard to turn down.

He reaches for her face. Her eagerness shines brighter than the moon but the gentle glimmer of her eyes stop him. Instead he reaches for the lapel of her hood and pulls it back over her head, allows his hand to linger before pulling away.

"I give you permission. Always." She says sadly.

"Of course you do."

"You summoned me for a reason..."

"A reason I've forgotten. I shouldn't be selfish. It can wait until you're feeling better."

His first detectable lie.

Ellana doesn't pull away. She stands under him waiting. Always waiting.

" _Of course_." She mimics him.

He puts a hand on the small of her back and nudges her forward. They walk back to camp in complete silence.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What this is? IDK? Just trying to make up for the lack of updates. Slowly we get close to all the fluff that's just bubbling up inside of me like a huge fart. LOL Anyway, thank you guys for reading and excuse the errors I miss. I've noticed some in prior chapters but I just haven't gotten around to fixing them. BUT I KNOW THEY ARE THERE! Also, if you have DA requests, feel free to follow my tumblr and send me prompts our what have you. My tumblr is my pen name: bawgdan
> 
> thank you once again.


	13. 0.1

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The sun sits in the middle of the sky but the snow barely melts.

"Should we be trusting him?" Dorian nudges Bull, muttering under his breath. They both follow behind three wagons. Bull uses his hand to shade the sun from his face, squinting. He shrugs his broad shoulders and makes a throaty noise.

"Ellana trusts him– but I typically do not trust a man who refuses to eat with his peers." Dorian re-adjusts the collar of his coat.

"If our Inquisitor has given Solas her faith then all we can do is abide her wishes. Aggressive disagreements only serve for opportunities of weakness." Bull unhooks his leather flask from his belt.

A moment of silence. Snow crunching under their feet. Bull untwists the top of his flask and throws back his head. Dorian scowls but attentively watches the ripple of his throat as he chugs it all down. And the mage thinks to himself– _what a peculiarly short neck for such a stocky beast_.

"You are not wrong, Bull." Dorian quirks a brow and sighs. He sets his sights ahead but he is unable to see Ellana around the rest of the caravan.

"I might be the ugly sort to your kind but I'm not simpleminded." Bull offers Dorian the last sup of his flask.

"Pray-tell what is my kind?" Dorian stops walking.

Bull stops three steps away, looks at him, shrugging again, but keeps his flask held out.

"The human kind." He finally says. "All flesh and self depriving of good pleasure."

"I disagree." Dorian artfully turns his wrists and snatches the flask.

"Aggressively?"

Before taking a sip, Dorian smiles brightly at his new found friend.

"The only thing I'm ever aggressive about is my desire to do as I please. Depriving myself? Absolute nonsense."

Skyhold really held up to its name for they were high enough in the mountains that the clouds felt very near. Any higher and they could touch the sun, elevate and reach godhood.

"So how freely do you live, Dorian Pavus?" The tone of Bull's voice hints a challenge. A smile spreads across his dark cracked lips.

Dorian inhales and licks the corners of his mouth. Beads of ale sparkle in his mustache.

"That's simply up to your observational skills, my dear Qunari friend."

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Something short and sweet. Trying to be inclusive. Thank you guys for reading. Leave a comment and follow my tumblr ;u; Sorry it's been a month. I've been working on my Naruto fic. I thought I could finish it but the writing muse is a fickle thing. Its enormous word count was a good break but I missed this.


	14. Skyhold

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Skyhold seemed to impart even more responsibility. It became imperative for Ellana to not only navigate as a leader, but to look the part. The stone walls, once dressed in cobwebs, immediately became decorated in excessive fashion. Word trickled down the mountains like a disease and every man in good standing sought her approval. At first, believing she to be a man herself– which caused for some tumultuous discourse but not enough to sacrifice the respect she had gained.

A castle fit for the Dalish Inquisitor.

And a _boudoir_ (the word rattles around her skull like marble balls) fit for a proper woman of power.

Ellana stands at her vanity and stares at her unfamiliar reflection. Josephine straightened the crinoline around her legs.

"I think periwinkle is your color, Inquisitor." Bonny Sims holds a heavy heap of a dress. "It compliments the color of your skin. Addresses the command in your eyes."

Femininity is a concept she never needed to think about. Among her clan, there was simply woman and man. Ellana observes her slender form in the mirror and thinks woman. The corset, she figures, must be the gateway to femininity. Where the corset cups her breast, her nipples are partly visible and she oddly thinks of Solas.

If she were brighter, Josephine and Bonny would witness the sudden flush of her body. Ashamed of her own thought, she turns away from her reflection, rubbing her cheeks.

"I don't think my eyes are all that commanding." Ellana says all too frankly.

Bonny huffs in that Orlesian way she has come to notice in Josephine. "Do not think so modestly of yourself."

"I agree. Who knew you had this hidden potential to be..." Josephine bites her bottom lip, ruminating on the proper way to compliment a wild elf.

"So palatable!" Bonny completes the task.

They sift through many dresses for the vast majority of the morning. Between Josephine reading letters of inquiry and making all the decisions, Ellana day dreams for the most of it. Too passive to care about Orlesian habits.

Her sense of loneliness expands in her chest and the intense desire to speak to Solas, have him wash her mind of the frivolity of Orlesian parlance, weighs on her like hunger.

"Stunning." Josephine turns Ellana to the mirror she had abandoned. Bonny admires her own work in packaging such a marvelous Inquisitor.

And Ellana very much likes the way she appears. She takes notice of her shape, aware of her body in such a way that feels vain. This dress is a pale blue that teases with her bare shoulders. A waterfall of fabric too heavy to move in, but Ellana gets the feeling that Orlesian women don't like to move very often.

"I look pretty." She says to her reflection matter-of-factly, nodding at herself. "But wouldn't a nice pair of fancy pants do?"

Bonny's nose wrinkles in disapproval and Josephine heaves a sigh.

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The only time she has a moment to herself is before she falls asleep. She sleeps so hard that her body cannot bring itself to dream. Knowing that the Fade is perpetually _there_ is comforting but if Solas has the power to force her to dream, then why hadn't he?

Should it terrify her that he has such an ability?

Ellana reprimands herself for thinking so fondly of him– not once considering that perhaps the feeling simply isn't mutual. And she shouldn't feel so strongly for someone who thinks so little of her culture.

She stops pacing the garden and rubs her cold hands together. Her stomach flips as if she is suffering from a great fall with no landing.

Would Solas ever consider her an equal?

"Inquisitor!" Cullen startles her, but she is too late in hiding her morose thoughts.

"Cullen." She greets him meekly.

He begins to speak but pauses. Ellana anticipates something vital that she should absorb for the future but he surprises her.

"I've yet to ask how you are feeling?" He clears his throat.

Ellana stands a little straighter. "I'm...alright."

Another stretch of time, they stare at each other. Puzzled for different reasons.

"Good. I know trauma is not something one should experience alone."

"Do you think I'm traumatized?" She asks sincerely, because she herself is unsure. It takes a moment for him to realize she is genuine.

"I hope you are not. Not asking has been bothering me."

Ellana wants to smile but she can will her face to appear less sullen. If her sadness is so obvious then why hasn't Solas bothered?

"Us knife-ears are strong willed and durable."

"Prejudices aside, you are still a person not devoid of feeling." Cullen smiles.

"You're right, but the world is not fair to feelings. What is that funny saying the Orlesians have?"

" _C'est la vie_." He says as perfectly as Josephine.

There's not much more to say to each other. They have nothing in common but hard times. Or at least they haven't explored much of their commonalities.

"Thank you, Cullen."

"Inquisitor you are not alone, but the onus can make one feel deserted." These are the words he parts on. Before leaving Ellana to her own musings, he gives her a reassuring but hard squeeze on her shoulder.

But all she can feel is her disappointment in Solas sawing at the sentiment. She could seek him first, but that is their routine. For once, she would like to be sought without the duress of death.

As she stares at a melting patch of snow, Ellana fully acknowledges her pitiful need for Solas. Outside of her clan, the world has been nothing but one sorrowful occurrence after another and more isolating than adventurous.

For the first time she allows herself to cry. Quietly. The cold wind dries the tears before they reach her chin.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you guys are still enjoying this. :)


	15. Collecting Moss

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It has taken Solas thousands of years to humble himself with patience. Never before would he have dreamed of enjoying the satisfaction he feels when his anticipation is rewarded. Nothing has gone as smoothly as he would've preferred but his plans are flowing, nourishing every opportunity.

"Why does Briala persist with her indiscretion?" Solas turns the message over in his hand, grimacing.

"She claims you do not respond promptly enough..." The waifish elf girl can't bring herself to look him in the face. Solas does not blame her for the tactlessness– the magnitude of what he is trying to accomplish is bewildering without context. He has gone out of his way to be the best informant he can be without revealing the gut and soul of his determination.

"And this...is any faster?" He waves the folded and sealed parchment incredulously.

"Truthfully, sir– I'm ignorant to your other means of communicating so I did not challenge her." She rubs her hands for warmth.

Solas sighs, his breath clouding in the cold air. "Well, she must believe you to be of some competence."

"I try." She nods. Her demeanor pains him– it's not fear that stiffens, strangles her voice. She holds her arms close to her, head down, like a dog that's been beaten.

All those years ago, if he had taught himself how to be patient, she wouldn't exist as a pitiful errand girl.

A ball of agony forms in his throat. The wind howls over Skyhold's dark walls.

"Tell me, if you could have anything in the world, what would that be?" He asks compassionately, with a warped sense of duty.

This startles her and it's clear that she has never given herself the autonomy to have depth. She stops staring at her worn boots and meets his gaze. "Happiness, sir."

"Happiness." He repeats her. "For the time being, I believe, you will find some contentment with the Inquisition. No one will mistreat you. The Inquisitor is Dalish so there is little room for acts of prejudice."

She only nods.

"And I think you will appreciate her kindness..."

Still, she simply nods and mumbles a 'yes'.

"But we must not allow basic decency to impair our judgment. You're only loyal to Fen'harel." It's peculiar, speaking outside of himself in such a way.

"Is the Inquisitor aware?"

"She is not." He says evenly, without conviction.

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He feels shameful for bringing the Inquisition to Skyhold. It's damn near sacrilege, but his plight needed sacrificing. And it's at best a gift to Ellana for being receptive. Out of spite, he hovers Briala's message, unopened, over his candle. Watches it burn slowly to the tips of his fingers before dumping the rest into his unfinished cup of tea.

Solas closes his eyes and sits in silence. Attempting to not live in the present, but not tired enough to fall asleep. Exhaling, he leans his head back in his chair, his chest deflating and a part of him becoming lighter.

"Solas." Ellana's voice echoes.

He hastily sits up straight like a man whose been caught in the middle of a displeasing deed. The looseness of his vulnerability slips away as he stands.

"Inquisitor?" His voice is somewhat groggy.

She steps towards him in an unflattering night dress. The sleeves are too long for her arms.

"What's your honest opinion of me?" There's accusation already in her body language.

"Is my opinion truly so necessary?"

"Yes." Her face distressfully contorts. As she leans against the table, her weight shakes the order of the surface and the candle light flutters. Solas has the sensation of being cornered– a tightness in his chest.

Ellana's short curls hide her furrowed brows. She gazes at him intensely, waiting. Unable to swallow her nearness, he takes two steps back, folding his arms along the back of his chair.

"If it means so much, Inquisitior..."

"Ellana." She reprimands him.

Slowly he nods at her demand, correcting himself. Solas enunciates her name the old elvhen way.

"I think you are a fascinating case of hope. What poets would call a small shimmer of light in complete darkness." His face reddens.

"So not a person, but an idea? A symbol?"

"You can be both, Ellana."

"But to you?"

He falls short of what else to say. Her most endearing trait is how unprepared he is when she provokes him. 

"Have I offended you?"  It takes every muscle in his body to hold his composure. There's centuries of anger, a cavity now filled with empathy, his sadness, the purpose of his redemption.

"We haven't spent much time together since we've arrived here."

"So am I an appendage of yours now?"

Ellana sucks in a breath, lips tightening. Her flattened hand balls into a fist. "Are we not one in the same?"

"There's your problem. This sort of thinking can and will be your demise." He says too coolly. Watching the life drain from a dying man's face, he's immune.

Ellana's heart breaks and its visible. All of her softens and he's not exactly hardened to it.

"So you think I'm weak?"

"I think your heart is in the wrong place at the wrong time. I speak to you as a leader first." _And a woman last_.

She tears her eyes away from him. Her bare feet viciously slap against the cold floor as she storms away from him.

Something compels him to not allow her to leave. His body works faster than his conscience. Solas quickly follows behind and takes her wrist, shaking her to a stop.

"You fail to understand me..."

"And you understand me any better, Solas?"

"I understand you completely. No assumptions. Without pretense. I see you clearly." He relates in the reverse to her struggles.  "Notwithstanding the many lives we are accountable for, I don't think you understand the dangers of two lonely people with a lot to lose."

"What exactly are you acknowledging now?" Ellana's night dress slides from her shoulder. Solas' grip loosens but she doesn't right her body. While he pulls away she draws near.

"That we have spent a lot of time together and perhaps I'm inappropriately fond of you."

"And what's wrong with that, Solas?"

"Everything." The darkness of his statement tightens her throat. He looks at her gravely.

"Then I'm sorry."

"Please don't. Apologizing for it makes it devastatingly real." He says absently, befuddled by how much easier it is to plainly say so than to feel it. If only he could speak and will it away– manifest it outside of his body until he feels like his old self.

Solas has mastered the skill of anticipation. He sincerely regrets giving her power with his truth. Any person teeming with as much eagerness as she has, wouldn't walk away from such a revelation. He knew she wouldn't before he uttered the treacherous thought.

She absorbs it, cupping his face and leading him, his half honesty, to her mouth. And he lets her. Ellana folds her arms around his neck and he accepts her with a strong embrace.

He thinks, maybe if he squeezed her hard enough she'd burst into ash and continue to live on merely as a concept. An idea of what he could be.

But she won't. She will remain complete and tangible.

The feeling is akin to finally realizing one's greatness.

And Solas becomes the fool, out witted by the horrible force that is passion. Betraying himself.

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	16. Malaise Is A Symptom

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Dorian told Ellana that there are two things one ought to have figured out before entertaining romance.

_"Enlighten me, Pavus!"_

_"You must first understand the capacity of your pride. Second, consider how much living you haven't done."_

Ellana has lived enough in the passing months to age her soul sixty years. She hardly recognizes herself. Her hair has grown so that her curls spiral around her cheeks. It softens her hardened exterior, causing her to look more feminine. 

She found Dorain's unexpected wisdom jarring—she'd only shared a page of Varric's new story. Finding amusement in the fact that she can read some of the words. He had snatched the sun-brown paper from her hands, examined the words like they were leading him to some secret he had been waiting to uncover.

Maybe he saw the change in her gait or the slight weight gain. One could argue it's just all the hard work swelling her muscles. She hasn't worked this hard in her life before. 

 _"Paltry nonsense."_ Was all he said afterward. Took the page with him and she never saw it again. He wasn't wrong. There are better things she could be learning to read.

Varric described love like an old beast escaping it's prison. Love is emancipation. No one is too ugly for it. Even the most vile person has someone worth fighting for. If not someone, _someones_.

She had kissed Solas once but opening her mouth to spit, eat, drink, or sigh, the ghost of his breathing makes the skin around her lips tingle. Ellana puts both hands to her face, fingers caressing the apples of her cheeks. The sensory deprivation worsens her heart. It thumps so hard it could punch a hole through her chest.

And Solas acts like it never happened. He can touch dreams. Can he alter memories? Did he work himself up a spell that sent his heart back in time? He isn't stiff when they interact. Just vacant. Not as vacant as his first impression but not readily available in the way she wants him to be.

Instead of feeling sorry for herself, she pretends to be the old woman the months had turned her into. She starts peeling her apple again, eats the skin and enjoys the sunlight in the garden. These moments of solitude are seconds split in half. 

"My heart is beating so fast..." Cole snaps a fallen twig with his thumb, appearing too suddenly. _How long had he been sitting behind the empty flower pots?_

"But...I'm not ill..." Eyes wet like rain puddles, Cole massages his chest with a hand, swallowing like a frog is stuck in his throat.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been a while. I've been working on one of my other fics. Trying to get them finished. I have this bad habit of neglecting things when the spark dies. I needed a break from it but still felt the need to write something. So here this is after like...what...four months I think? Who is really doing the math tho. Sorry guys. Thanks for sticking around if you're still here. Sorry this wasn't anything special.


	17. The Greatest Secret Of Them All

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Solas draws in a breath so deep, he sucks the cold air into his lung. He's been hiding from his own reflection for many days. Incapable of sleeping soundly. The sudden loss of control ate away at his forbearance—he is disgusted with himself.

He can hear the old gods rumbling with laughter in the Fade.

 _In what world!_ Who would ever suppose that Fen'harel, the embodiment of smoke and iniquity, desires mortal flesh. Not for consumption...but for tenderness!

For every wicked deed, lusting for a 'perishable' must be his repentance if there is no end to his failure.

"Inqusitior, may I speak with you in private?" Even the sound of his own voice sickens him.

Ellana sits on a foot stool between Leliana and Josephine, who had been reading letters aloud. This is the first time he's been inside of her bedchamber. It's a disarray but what else could he expect from a Dalish woman. It worsens his case.

Leliana looks down at Ellana with no expression. Josephine unfolds her legs, breaking open the last seal.

"Of course." Ellana speaks after a while. She lowers her eyes away from all of them, physically incapable of ordering anyone around. Leliana, daringly, sits with the intent of forcing Ellana to dismiss them, but Josephine rises.

"I do think we have exhausted ourselves for the night. There isn't a thing here..." She gestures at all the letters strewn across the vanity "...That we can solve before sun rise."

Leliana drags her hardened stare away from Ellana to a smiling Josephine.

"I don't disagree." Leliana quips with a watery sigh then stands.

Solas doesn't look at either of them. He keeps his attention on Ellana. On the way out, Leliana's grazes him with a shoulder, but he doesn't budge until the wooden door shuts. The wind shakes the fire of the hearth. Solas wanders further inside of the bedroom.

"I really don't know what to say to you." Ellana gets up from the tiny stool and tosses a scroll onto the floor.

"You sleep in a dwarf's cave." He mildly observes, stepping over a bowl of half eaten grapes.

She doesn't find it the least bit amusing. Presses her lips in a hard line and stares out the wide open window. The breeze ruffles her hair. Ellana holds herself and shivers.

"Honestly, I don't expect you to say much. I just need your approval." He says after a long suffocating silence.

"You need my approval? Your mind is brilliant but your sense of humor is less than desirable." Ellana tries to be spiteful but her words are despondent.

Solas gives her a weak crooked smile. She can't bring herself to reciprocate it. Her body tenses up like his presence is a heavy smell that makes her ill. It's not hot but sweat shimmers on her forehead.

"I do." He sits down in the chair Josephine left warm. The cushion had soaked up the smell of her perfume.

Ellana finally gives him the darkness of her eyes. The red curtains billow around her tiny frame. She looks awfully like a symbol of a powerful force and he is the prey in her line of vision. The distance she stands away, the firelight doesn't ignite a glimmer in her eyes. They are so brown, from where he sits, they look black.

"What?" Ellana is a terrible actress, but it's not at her own expense. Solas has lived long enough to distinguish a woman's hate from her passion. Ellana is all passion without the articulacy. If she had the soul of an artist, he would've fallen much sooner. Her lack of wisdom and good judgement makes the resistance easier. Sometimes, she speaks and he cringes.

Other times, her unawareness makes her captivating.

"I heard a cry for help as I slept." Solas puzzles over what she looks like under her clothes. All women, more or less, look the same naked, but the thrill of one he had yet to become familiar with, physically, surmounts the quintessential truth that once you've had one, you've had them all.

"I didn't think you were capable of sympathy." Ellana steps away from the window to sit across from him.

He doesn't give her what she wants. "It was the voice of an old friend whose been summoned against their own will. They need my help."

"A spirit?" She sinks into the chair with her legs far apart.

" _Vin_."

"What does that have to do with me, Solas?"

"I want you to come with me."

"Why?" Her lips are full and the perfect natural tint of red. Solas clenches his jaws as he searches for the right words. The protrusion of her collar bones distract him. Ellana remains oblivious to his natural inclinations.

Somewhere far away, the laughter reaches him while he's awake and for that he darkens. Curls his fingers in to a fist. "Because I think it's important that you come. It will help you understand me."

"What if I'm tired of trying to understand you?" She shrugs a shoulder. That one gesture breaks whatever sense she had to suppress her inner feelings. Her expression is of true heartbreak.

"That's not how friendships work." But he refuses to give up his strength. She doesn't deserve it. Solas refuses his longing. He can't want for a better world and _this one_ at the same time. He'd rather die than exist in _this one_ forever.

Ellana gets up again, but this time only to kneel at his feet. She puts her hands on his knees and that part of himself that kept on _wanting_ folds itself in his stomach.

"Friendship?" She almost whispers but the ghosts of the dead hear her clearly. Thousands of years deep in their graves.

"I'll go. Not because I want to understand you. It's simply the right thing to do—to help someone."

They stare at each other. Solas thinks to himself— _so this is where I end up? This is where I die?_

"Then I'm glad." His tongue feels fat in his mouth.

"Solas?"

He waits.

"You're the closest thing I have to home." She says without the pull of many millennia.

He can say the same about her, but he'd never admit it. Not even to the Maker. It's a secret he is content with taking to his grave.

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	18. 0.2

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_Men drink to keep themselves warm. Life is frigid._

Josephine can't recall if someone had said this to her or if she had read it in a book. Wherever it came from, she did not agree with the sentiment. She had sung in enough alehouses to know that men drank for many different reasons. They like to tell themselves that it's all for sport—but really it's a way to stretch a blanket over a rotting corpse.

Cullen brings the mug from his face. Sits it down on the table. Ale tips over the rem and stains the map.

"Why do you drink? For the flavor or the feeling?" She tucks a floppy curl behind her ear, ensnaring him with her eyes. Cullen smacks his lips then rubs the stubble on his chin.

"It depends. Most of the time, I enjoy the taste..." His eyes fall on the dagger Leliana had angrily stabbed into the table.

"I don't believe anyone actually enjoys the taste." Josephine wrinkles her nose at the smell.

He responds with a crooked grin and says, "The more rotten your mood is, the sweeter it tastes."

"What does it taste like now?"

"Bitter." He doesn't hesitate.

" _Oh_." Josephine taps her finger, mindlessly, on a spot on the map. She marvels longingly at a zigzagged river and wonders why Thedas feels so small but looks so big on paper.

They both sigh in unison and startle each other. Neither of them have a thing in common. Often, Cullen is a lot less desperate for answers than she is and its the cause for most of their arguments.

"Why is it bitter today?" She mumbles, picking up a letter she's read five times already.

Cullen takes a long time to answer. He stares into the dark corner the candle-light did not reach. There are a million ways to answer that question. Josephine sucks her teeth because she doesn't have the heart for a thoughtful answer. She doesn't care that much but she's too tired to get up from her seat. Thinking five steps ahead, all the time, is just as exhausting as swinging a sword.

"For the first time...in a very very long time I feel somewhat at peace with myself. I don't feel too bad. I worry but not enough to give myself wrinkles."

"You've seen a lot. You're probably just immuned to stress." Three curls spiral out of her bun. Josephine sweats the oils from her scalp like it hasn't been a long winter.

"I'm simply optimistic—believe it or not. Even though I worry about the Inquisitor." Cullen loses interests in finishing his ale.

"Ugh...our poor Inquisitor. The Maker picks and chooses and we will never have a say in the matter." Josephine loosens the cuff of a sleeve.

"Do you think you would've been a wiser choice, Josephine?"

She huffs but their conversation pauses. It's a silence so thick their ears ring.

"I think she's a lot stronger than we give her credit. She's committed herself and that's the best thing we could've achieved."

Ellana could've easily thrown herself from a cliff or cut her own hand off to feed to the wolves.

"I suppose you're right, Cullen."

"I've never been so sure in my life."

What makes Ellana so strong is that such a tribulation hasn't broken her moral compass. Cullen figures it has a lot to do with her not being human. Elves, with all of their shortcomings, never seem impure in their desires. Humans want and take up until their last breath.

He wonders what its like to not want for anything other than to live for the next sunrise.

"The Inquisitor has helped me see just how dissatisfied I've been. The rest of the us too..."

Josephine, again, has nothing more to say. She closes her eyes and pretends to fall asleep.

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. I just want to thank you guys that have stuck around between my sporadic updates. This recent retrograde destroyed all the nerve I had to update like a truly committed fic writer, yet I am nothing but a sham. Kind of a loser for blaming seasonal depression on a retrograde too. I know most of you are reading this ready to torch me for not moving on to the romance. It's kinda like I catfished yall into opening this up only to find an endless back and forth between characters you already know so much about. I'm very sorry and I understand if you jump ship because at this point I feel like a blank page. 
> 
> I have no idea what I'm doing anymore and I also have no control over my life. Anyways, thanks for reading. Sorry for the long breaks in between. Let's hope 2019 is a much better year for my heart space.


	19. Without A Throne

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Drowning burns but the worst way to die is being burnt alive. Ellana will never be able to forget the isolated screaming of the mages. Their surroundings quieted eerily—had the plains been anticipating this murder? She can't describe the way the air changes with the spike of Solas' magic.

One thing is certain now. Ellana doesn't know if she should be scared of Solas or scared for him. The spell struck their bodies like lightning would a tree and released something into the breeze _No_ —it stopped the wind entirely. The smoke of their blackened bodies rise and curls straight into the air.

So she and Varric stand as witnesses to Solas' slaughter. All this time, Ellan has been confusing this anger of his for perpetual joylessness. He gained layers and lost some simultaneously.

The worst of it is that she commanded him not to harm them, but he disregarded her. And she can't blame him. What authority did she have over someone who could reach the dead from the Fade? A king would feel disrespected, but Ellana, the Inquisitor, almost a woman who feels...

She doesn't know how she feels. Hurt isn't how she wants to understand it. Maybe a staggering gut punch of confusion.

Solas holds his back towards them. As he drops his arms, the muscles in his back relax.

"Why did you do that?" Ellana finally feels compelled to speak. She can't look like a leader with slack jaw.

"Everything has it's price." He answers nonchalantly.

Varric makes a wheezy noise.

"Who gave you the right to decide who lives and dies!" Ellana's mouth fills with spit.

Silence is crueler than exchanging words, not that Solas cares that he always finds new ways to hurt her feelings.

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	20. 0.3

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Exalt means to elevate. To elevate one's hubris or to elevate the soul to contentment. The Exalted Plains do neither. Varric crosses out words he deems too flowery for the setting of his imagination. Underlines words that spring to his mind but he forgets their meaning. His heart told him to write down _bloviate_ , but the greater mystery is if he's using it accordingly. He doesn't scratch it out with his stylus.

He says _bloviate_ aloud to no one. Hums. Then proceeds to scribble down more nonsense.

"Have you no name for her yet?" Cassandra sits beside him under the ancient tree. 

"I can't give her a name until I find her voice. Do you know what bloviate means?" 

Cassandra scrunches her nose. Varric takes his eyes away from his writing and looks at her with unusual focus. Cassandra's stomach flutters—he's only waiting for her answer, but it had never occurred to her how serious he is about writing. 

His stories always felt so natural. Lies that always made sense. Never any plot holes. 

Now she feels like she has intruded upon a moment of intimacy between Varric and his fictional characters.

"Verbose speech. A king bloviates. So do poets." Cassandra is vulnerable without her armor. 

"That's what I thought but I wasn't sure." Varric carries on with his writing. He knits his brows and crosses out another sentence.

Soaking up the last shreds of sunlight, Cassandra sprawls her legs out into the tall grass. The smoke of the pyres roll across the plains. 

"Do I bloviate?" Varric lets out a shaky sigh.

"Of course you do." She responds bluntly.

Varric rips the parchment in half. Shreds it with his fingers then throws the debris up into the wind.

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	21. Salt

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Solas soothes his unhappiness by being alone, but Skyhold has slowly filled up with people from all over. There is nowhere he can hide himself until he feels emotionally capable to deal with his peers. They all make him anxious. He's gotten too comfortable with their habits. Vivienne brought with her not only the grandiosity of her presence but an endless noise of Orlesian carousing.

Setting those mages on fire gave him a release he didn't know he needed. From that moment, he's been on edge for weeks at a time. It was an act of protest to the unseen force that's been testing his patience. He is still Fen'harel. 'Solas' is just a bookmark in history. It takes every bit of him not to set all of Skyhold on fire to preserve its memory, to keep it from becoming anything else. The making of new memories where there ought not be any, has been a torturous process.

Nosey enough to see what is the cause for the fussing, Solas steps out into the throne room carrying an armful of books. Ellana stands perched against the arm of the throne. Vivienne sits in it with her hands folded and propped on a knee. The sunlight pouring down from the windows washes out the colors of their skin and clothes, but their silhouettes are distinguishable. They pace around each other like half formed ghosts.

"Is it really in our best interest to meddle in royal affairs?" Ellana wears a dress that drapes loosely around her arms.

"We wouldn't be meddling per se. Ultimately, we will be preventing civil unrest. A war in Orlais is the last thing we need—it would hinder our resources." Josephine always knows what to say.

"If you play the game the right way, you'll have nothing to worry about, darling." Vivienne shrugs her shoulders.

"My worries have little to do with the 'game' or what have you. I'm an elf."

"And Celene's confidant is an elf. Briala." Leliana weighs in. "The royal court may think little of you, but Celene is who we are trying to align ourselves with. The court will do what she says regardless."

Anything pertaining to Briala is of importance to Solas. He stands against a column like a long shadow.

"The rumors are..." Josephine starts again.

"Oh, dear, please. Gossip is for old women." Vivienne rises from the throne with the soft click of her heels.

"The rumors are that Celene and Briala were lovers once. I think the empress will be partial to hearing anything you have to say." Josephine shakes her loose hair.

Solas grimaces at the thought of ever being with a human. He judges Briala harshly. Empress Celene is no beautiful human woman to begin with. Other than her power, she has no beguiling traits.

"And that is none of our business." Vivienne rubs the bare expanse of her collar in mock astonishment. She rolls her eyes.

A long drawn out silence follows. They wait for Ellana to speak but she just flops into the throne, tossing a long sleeve over it's arm. Proceeding to massage her temples. Josephine clears her throat and Ellana closes her legs, sits upright like a lady.

"Ellana, I speak to you as a friend first. If we do not intervene, the Inquisition's battle will be much harder." Leliana speaks softly. They hush. Solas' holds the books closer to his chest.

"Then so be it. If I am a 'hero', then I must act accordingly I suppose." Ellana huffs begrudgingly.

Solas hastily steps from behind the column. Keeps his eyes ahead so that he doesn't make eye contact with any of them. He does startle them with his sudden appearance but none of them speak. The sight of him drastically sinks Ellana's mood.

A hero is an individual put up against an unethical circumstance. Very rarely do they choose their path. Ellana concludes that there is no such thing as a 'hero'. She had failed those mages in the same way that Solas has been failing her. There is no such thing as a hero. People either make good or bad decisions. Sometimes those choices alter their surroundings.

She is too much of a coward to confront him. Especially in front of her advisors. It did not matter how much Josephine insisted that she trust them with her vulnerability. Some things are not worth sharing. All of Thedas wanted her dead, alive, stuck in a state of suffering—Thedas _needs_ to occupy her conscience.

She needs at least one secret. Even if it shows on her face when he vanishes behind a door, she would not address it vocally. And would not answer any question pertaining to Solas.

"We have weeks to prepare, Ellana. Do not fret about the details just yet." Josephine somewhat sings.

Ellana hums indifferently.

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Solas doesn't run out of books to read because there is so much of Thedas' history he has missed out on. It's good to know your enemy. Understanding the enemy is how he properly weaponizes himself against them.

And there's still a lot that he doesn't know. Magic always fixed confusion. Now, in modern Thedas, it's not as utilized as it was once ago. The people govern magic like it's not a natural source of life. The newness perplexes him.

"Solas." Ellana wakes him from a light sleep after staring at the same sentence for an eternity. She stands over the table. The two bookshelves give them a smidgen of privacy.

He clears the phlegm from his throat, lifting his head to gaze at her.

Ellana pulls back the wooden chair and sits across from him.

"I deserve an apology." She folds her arms on the table.

"For what?" His voice croaks.

Ellana doesn't answer. She rubs her wrists, pushing back the gold bracelets. The fabric of her sleeve flutters from the table. As time has pressed on, she truly assumes the role of someone important. She wears a pair of earrings he has never seen before.

"I'm sorry." Solas sees no point in torturing her.

"That's not a genuine apology, Solas." She mutters.

"If I screamed it at you, would that make it authentic?" He snorts.

Ellana slams a hand down on the table. It stings her palm. Two mages stop whispering to look at them.

"I'm sick of you undermining me!" Ellana says between her teeth.

"That is a false accusation." He cooly deflects, turning the page he hadn't read.

Again, she slams her down but this time, she sprawls her fingers out on the book, dragging it away from him.

Solas stands from his chair. Knocks it back but it leans against the bookshelf behind him. He makes fists but holds them at his sides.

"People can see you." His nose gets sharper when he frowns.

"They see you too, Solas." Ellana doesn't move.

"What do you want from me?" He grinds his teeth together.

Ellana rises, her fingers still pressing down on the book. It takes a while for her to answer. She knows but its not a solid thought. Its many instances and moments. Feelings that don't exactly fit the terms she wants to use. She's never felt such intense trepidation with herself.

 _Acceptance..._? No that's not what she wants to say. He has already accepted her. Not in the way she wants him to. You can't force people to love and respect you.

Ellana put two fingers on her chest, where her heart is. Rubs circles into her skin. Lowering her chin, she finally says to him, "I want you to stop twisting the thing you've wedged here. That is all."

Solas doesn't know how to carefully respond to her assertion. If anyone is culpable for their feelings, its her. From the very beginning, it has been. Her insistence. The fact that this all began because she did not know how to be at the right place at the right time.

The green veins of magic pulsate in her hand.

"That's all?" _As if there is anything else._

"That is all." Ellana hasn't stopped frowning.

Solas walks around the table to be near her. He observes her face. Searches every point, dip, curve, and shadow. Then he takes her hand from her chest.

"Then it's done. No more."

"I don't believe you." As Ellana shakes head, her earrings tangle in her hair.

"Then I will just have to show you." He doesn't give himself time to think about it. The words happen naturally.

Ellana knots her arms around his torso. She hides her face in his chest, grabbing the fabric of his tunic into her fists. And Solas submits, running a hand through the thick ringlets of her hair. A warm tingle manifests in the pit of his stomach. It spreads down to his loins. Wrapping his arm around her shoulder, he curls his back just enough so that their bodies press together. Ellana makes a soft whimper and they leave it unspoken. A beginning and an end. There is no middle.

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End file.
